


Down, Down, Down (a wide open sea)

by Saxifactumterritum



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Adventure, Alien Planet, Canon Compliant, M/M, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 05:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20773637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saxifactumterritum/pseuds/Saxifactumterritum
Summary: A weird new planet to explore, two Ancient instalations, Rodney and John are in love of course (in the background), there is so much ocean, Rodney isn't the god of earthquakes.





	1. The Journey Out

**Author's Note:**

> this is mcshep, but it's not the focus. 
> 
> i wasn't sure whether to tag Teyla and Ronon, I think they are not in it enough. 
> 
> WARNINGS: I can't actually think of any. HMU if you want to ask about a specific trigger, I'm saxifactumterritum on here and on tumblr and on dreamwidth and on pillowfort :)

The boats on PX9-443 are made from other things; cannibalised bits of Ancient buildings, barrels and tanks, whole tree trunks, bits of space ships, even bone. They’re surprisingly comfortable, with deep cushions to lounge against behind bulkheads, free of the wind and spray. Rodney had been vocal about not wanting to be the team going back to PX9-443 because the ‘jumpers can’t come through the gate, it sank beneath the ocean years ago and the people here have dug it out and built a structure around it to keep the water away that means there’s no space to maneuver a ‘jumper. It takes days to get anywhere here, Rodney’s a busy man. It’s not so bad, though, sprawled comfortably, watching the sea pass, listening to the unfamiliar language of the locals. It sounds like four or five different languages, actually. Ronon’s sat up ahead, more alert, but Teyla’s relaxed by Rodney, arms behind her head, enjoying the calm. 

They’ve brought Captain Aida’s team, SGA-6. He’s a broad-shouldered, Japanese-Welsh man more widely known as ‘English’. He and his team are sat further back in the boat, talking excitedly. Sheppard’s sat with English, mouth tight shut while the captain runs over what they know about PX9-443. Not a lot, really; a lot of water, about 90% of the planet according to the natives, the gate’s far from any colony or city, most people live either semi-nomadic lives on the ocean, on the two mountain ranges, or on vast raft towns. They know about two Ancient sites, besides the gate; one high in the mountains, one under the ocean. They negotiated access to both and Rodney’s hoping to find more.

It’s six hours by water from the gate to the biggest city, holding a sort of centralised government. The planet has what seem to be different tribes and countries, or territories, but this city, called Lak or Akha or Lakha depending on who they asked, seems to be a meeting place for anyone who wants to use the gate. SGA-1 is here because they’re the ones who made contact, not going further than the gate last time but having endless meetings. Teyla ‘bagsied’ this mission for what she thinks is an Ancient city (so far it’s a control room and some tunnels, Rodney’s skeptical), SGA-6 is here because they’re all marine biologists or environmental scientists or navy or water-related in some way. 

English is incredibly excited and talks enough for himself and Sheppard, asking a billion questions about their new equipment. It’s not that new, John put together a new essentials list to kit up with on every mission when they came back to Pegasus. English doesn’t need answers, just playing with the loop things (8 something, climbing stuff), which is good seeing as Sheppard isn’t saying a word. Rodney tips his head back and watches, noting Sheppard’s white-knuckled grip on the seat he’s perched on. Rodney’s already asked once what the problem is and Sheppard’s just ignored him, gone and sat with English instead. He says something, now, though, and inches his way back to Rodney, sitting close, sharing a cushion. 

“Get your own,” Rodney grumbles, nudging John with an elbow. 

He doesn’t get a response and John looks miserable so Rodney shares. Grudgingly. John eventually admits to getting seasick, about an hour into the journey, eyes closed and body tense. Rodney always feels a warm thrill when John shares things, even little things like this. Rodney’s pleased with it, because it confirms for him that, yes, they are friends, and, yes, John trusts him. Likes him even. Though Rodney knows he’ll deny it if anyone were to ask, because John is just like that. So, John’s miserable and Rodney’s pleased and SGA-6 are hanging off the sides of the boat shouting about the sea-life they can see and happy as anything. Doctor Martinez nearly falls in trying to see if that was really an octopus (of course not, they’re not on Earth, there is no way that the exact same animal has evolved millions of stars away. Rodney has plenty to say about how it’s definitely not really an octopus. He keeps his mouth shut though). Ronon and Teyla are both relaxed now, taking advantage of the sunshine and relative safety, both of them keeping a half-eye on John. 

He manages not to throw up, which Rodney’s impressed by. After three hours, though, he’s curled up against Rodney in a miserable little ball, sweaty and pale. Rodney hums to himself, shifting so they’re behind one of the stacks of boxes that he’s been told are ‘naringa kaal’. Teyla says it’s some sort of fish. John groans, out of easy sight of his men, closing his eyes. Rodney pulls out his tablet and his equipment, doing some scans, typing just for the sake of typing until John dozes off. He said once, drugged out of his mind, that hearing Rodney tapping away meant safety. 

They arrive into a harbour two and a half hours after that, catching a good currant or something. SGA-6 all hurry off the boat after the PX9-443 locals, eagerly asking questions now they’re on firm ground. English brings up the rear for his team and stands watching their backs, waiting for John to get up and give some orders. Rodney takes a moment to look around at Lak. The mountain is strange. It rises out of the sea, sheer in a lot of places, cliffs and crags and nowhere to land. But they’ve snaked their way into an inlet, miles and miles around, a kind of lake. The land slopes more gently, here, and rock has been mined away to create the harbour. Rodney can see that there are tides, this place must be inaccessible at low-tide. But now they can get the boat right in, to a pier. It’s tethered there, the water calm, the pier busy and clamouring. 

There are people selling things, other boats bringing in fish, people greeting each other and saying goodbyes. There are children running around among the crowds, playing some kind of game. The pier opens up onto the harbour-side, buildings rising up cobbled together like the boats from flotsam and jetsum. There’s even a long barn-like structure that looks kind of wraith. Above the harbour, the town rises; cleared forest and what look like narrow mines surrounding the houses. It’s all higgledy piggledy, not built on any kind of grid. There’s a railtrack of sorts, carts set on it - it looks like it hauls goods, not people. Above the town, the mountain rises, looming over everything. Rodney accepts Ronon’s help climbing out of the boat, still looking around, intrigued by the mish-mash of tech he can see in the buildings, the train tracks, the carts. These guys probably don’t have space-travel, but they have other things that look hopeful.

“Oh my god, why is it still moving?” John mutters, gripping Rodney’s elbow as he steps ashore. 

“Sir,” English calls, up ahead a little, trying to keep an eye on his very enthusiastic team, who have hauled their equipment off the boat by now and are trying to rush off in all directions. “Dr Martinez! Corporel James, grab our scientist would you? She’s about to wander off.”

Rodney snickers. He doesn’t wander off. He glances at John, expecting some refutation of his unspoken smugness, but he’s still too sick to counter it. He’s got his eyes closed again and is swallowing hard. 

“Ah, I think the colonel’s… held up,” Rodney says, trying not to be too amused. 

“You can report to me, Captain Aida,” Ronon says, pushing through the bustle to an empty bit of pier. 

English gives him a nod, still distracted trying to get his scientist back. His two corporals, both of them marines who for one reason or another have dive training, seem to have her and are heading back. Sargeant Qui, a navy seal, is standing chatting with the fishermen, ignoring English for the moment. As soon as Martinez and the marines are back Qui also turns away from his conversation and English struggles back through the crowd, his team in some semblance of discipline, and makes it to Ronon’s spot. Rodney watches it all with thinly veiled amusement, enjoying the chaos that is, for once, nothing to do with him. 

“Stop looking so god damned smug,” John mutters. 

Teyla’s making her way over as Ronon and English check SGA-6 are prepped to move off. Rodney hands John into her care and bustles over, pulling up the schematics of the place he thinks they might be looking for. He arrives just as Ronon gets done with the boring stuff. 

“It’s deep,” English says, taking the datapad from Rodney and looking over the readings they’ve been taking as they travel, “and the rest of this is from the database, it’s old intel. We can only get so much from the locals here, their divers don’t have the equipment to go to this depth, they think it’s nearly 2,000 feet. I’m not sending anyone down that far on this kind of intel. We’ll use the ROV, see what we can find. This’ll take a few days, Dr McKay.”

“Whatever, take this pad with you I’ve included some stuff about the tech I’m hoping to find, and energy readings to keep an eye out for, and all the good stuff,” Rodney says. He hopes the Ancients were looking for power, with the global warming research. Maybe it’s an erroneous assumption, but on Earth global warming is so firmly linked with energy consumption and creation… 

“It’ll be our conservative timeline, sir,” English says, turning and addressing John, who’s managed to pull himself together and come over with Teyla. 

“Okay,” John says, shrugging. “We’re in no hurry, here. Take the time to do it safe, Captain. If you need more equipment from Atlantis let us know, we’ll be headed back tomorrow to report.”

“We’ll do the periodic radio checks to make sure we can stay in contact,” Teyla says. “If not, we’ll come by your camp before heading to the gate.”

“Yes ma’am,” English says, saluting. 

Not mentioning even once that he and Ronon literally just went over all of that. Rodney rolls his eyes and John reaches out to swat at him. Right, less smug. SGA-6 peel off, heading down to another ship to take them out onto the ocean again. SGA-1 are headed in-land, making their way through the crowd. Teyla takes the lead and John takes their six, leaving Ronon to keep an eye on Rodney. Like he needs babysitting. He scowls, but he’s quickly distracted by a woman selling bits of pipe, a weird silvery-blue metal, and then there’s someone who’s rigged together a grill and is selling fish, it smells really good, and then there’s a bunch of people gathered around a heap of stuff dragged off a boat, twisted fish-net around what looks like some kind of shelled animal, turtle-like, or maybe more like a snail, with suckers. It looks like they’ve dragged in some tech with the net, maybe Wraith or Ancient, and- 

Ronon has to grab hold of Rodney’s vest, then, as he strays aside, eyes on the tech. Right. That’s why Ronon’s keeping an eye on him. He looks around and sees that Teyla’s made it to the top of the harbour and is talking to someone tall, feminine, hair in braids to keep it out of their face. They’ve got one hand on Teyla’s arm, head bent to listen, and is nodding along. John’s waiting impatiently for Ronon to get Rodney back on track and catch up. They do just as Teyla nods, pleased, and steps back, turning to them. 

“This is Khaghashi,” Teyla says, consonants coming out first soft and then guttural. “They are a representative of the council and will be our liasson.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m John Sheppard, and this is Ronon Dex and Rodney McKay,” John says.

“Yes, yes,” Rodney says, waving aside the niceties. “I have questions.”

“Later,” John says, visibly restraining himself from rolling his eyes. “First, we’d like to see the Ancient ruins. Right, Rodney?”

“Yes, fine,” Rodney says. He’d like to point out that he can actually multitask, but even Teyla looks impatient so he subsides. 

Happily, they don’t have to walk up the mountain; Khaghashi has organised a cart for them. Unhappily, it’s a cart that travels along the tracks, drawn by some kind of hydraulic system, running from the sea all the way up the side of the mountain. The journey is uncomfortably jolting, Rodney’s almost certain this is for transporting goods and not people, still, and he’s sure this is not a dignified way to travel. He does get to sit with Khaghashi and they’re happy to tell Rodney a bit about the Wraith tech they’ve integrated and how they neutralise the telepathic component in the organic material. Rodney takes notes and drafts a report and an email, requesting that this be added to the rosta of ‘things to trade for’. All that’s on that rosta so far is ‘access to Ancient tech’ and ‘fish’. They’re paying for their access this trip with medical knowledge, they’re still working on the fish thing. On second thoughts, Rodney adds about the fish the smelt on the harbour. Maybe he can get a taste while they’re here.

“Rodney, get your head out of your pad and look around you,” John says, poking Rodney from behind. 

“I’m working I’ll have you know,” Rodney says. 

“Work later,” Teyla murmurs, also sat behind. 

Rodney puts his stuff away and does as he’s told, this one time. He’s glad; to the left are winding tracks leading into the tangle of houses that make up Lak, but to the right is the ocean. As far as he can see, as they twist their way up, there’s just water. It’s a clear day and it’s spectacular. Even if he looks behind, or when the train turns just so and he can see over the houses and trees, there’s water. Rodney stares, then finds himself drawn to look at the houses, spotting more Wraith tech, bits of Ancient sheeting, something that looks like the traveler people John met, tree-bark, clay - every kind of material making up the buildings. The trees are cleared in patches, he could see that from the harbour, but from here it becomes clear that there are still trees growing in what must be streets. From high up, you probably can’t see much of the city, or the mines. 

“If Wraith did manage to get through the gate, and make it across the great barrier, would they see the houses?” Teyla asks, mind moving along the same paths as Rodney’s. 

“No,” Khaghashi says, sounding pleased. With themself and their people, but also with Teyla for noticing. “The forest cloaks us. A little higher there’s a crag that masks the harbour from most angles, too. The colonies that live away from land, they might be spotted, but they are small and keep their technology hidden.”

“The Wraith assume you are undeveloped?” Teyla asks. It’s not really a question, though, and she continues even as Khaghashi nods. “My people are nomadic and hunt, hiding our own knowledge. Yes, I see.”

“The Athosians are an oral culture, aren’t you? You pass knowledge through stories?” Khaghashi asks. 

“Yes,” Teyla says. “And singing.”

“Here we write things down,” Khaghashi says. “It’s dangerous, but it preserves much. We keep these hoomm nearby what you refer to as the Ancient ruin.”

“Hoomm?” Rodney queries. Everyone speaks English in Pegasus, but sometimes there are linguistic twists that lose things in translation. 

“Books, I think,” Teyla says. “Or similar. Written records.”

She and Khaghashi start talking about language and Rodney tunes it out, going back to looking at the scenery. The train is slow, it might have been quicker to walk.

* * *

“Oh my… holy shit!!” 

Rodney turns away to hide how wide and affectionate his smile is, but it just leaves him looking at John, everyone else the other side of him. John’s mouth is gaping open, honest to god gaping, and his eyes are huge and filled with awe. Rodney can’t really blame him. He turns back. 

“This is a, a… a whale?” he asks, face back under his control. He moves a step closer to what can only be, for lack of a better word, an aeroplane. 

“Whale? We use the ribcage of a Pinaah,” Khaghashi says, frowning. 

“Big fish?” Rodney asks. 

They don’t just use the ribcage, though that is… evident - Rodney can see the structure of bones holding the stretched, growing material between the staves, the wings jutting out long and engineered perfectly for a take-off like this. The plane is set on a plateau, you take away the blocks and it rushes off the edge of a cliff. Rodney wants to know everything about this weird little flying machine, it has a tail. The cockpit is made out of the light-weight, thin, metal the Ancients use in the walls of Atlantis, flakes of it. It’s shaped like a fish head. 

“It is a…” Khaghashi looks at the tablet Teyla’s given them, attempting a translation. “I think, mammal?”

“Yes. Like a whale,” Rodney says. 

“Can I fly it?” John asks, all breath and wonder still. 

“No,” Khaghashi says, sounding like they’re trying not to laugh. 

Khaghashi flies. They have a co-pilot, part of the team who take care of the plane on the plateau. They do let John sit in the single seat behind the pilots, the rest of them strapped in further back, in the belly of the creature. The bones must be hollow, it’s so light. Rodney drafts an email and adds to his report; they should definitely get the schematics for this thing, even just for fun. Even just to make John’s face do that again. Rodney doesn’t put that in his report. In fact, he puts everything aside as they ‘take off’, because ‘taking off’ is just dropping off the side of a mountain. He predicted it, but having it happen is NOT FUN. Rodney screams and clutches his seat and tries not to listen to John’s happy laughter as they plummet to their deaths. 

“Holy god damn!” John crows, as they level out. “Rodney, did you see that?! Are you seeing this!!! We’re flying a mother fracking whale!!!”

“He has his eyes shut,” Teyla says. 

“Open them,” John demands. 

“This is way cooler than a jumper,” Ronon says. 

Rodney does open his eyes, just a crack, just enough to see John’s affronted, insulted expression as he twists to look at Ronon over his shoulder. There are no windows exactly in this thing, but there are holes in the floor, which is not bloody reassuring. Rodney gasps and pants for breath, watching the mountain and the ocean dip away from them as they rise in a spiral, up and up and up, and then rock and trees come rushing up toward them and he closes his eyes again and tries not to embarrass himself. They land with a heavy bump and roll for a long way before trundling to a stop. Rodney sits still for a while, listening to John discuss the plane excitedly with Khaghashi and the copilot. His radio crackles and English comes over, checking in. 

“SGA-6, this is Teyla. We’re still getting you loud and clear,” Teyla responds. “How far are you from your destination? Over.”

“another… twenty minutes? Oh, Qui say thirty minutes, over” English says, voice pretty clear still. 

“Any weather and we might get more interference, but looks like we’ll be good for keeping in touch,” Rodney says. “I might be able to boost a signal, if we’re stationary, if things do get worse.”

Teyla passes it all on and Rodney peels his eyes open, undoing the straps and clambering out of the contraption, feeling shaky. He raises a finger before John, waiting outside for them and bouncing, can comment. John looks like he’s going to comment anyway, so Rodney reminds him of the sea-journey, and John finally shuts up. They’ve reached a second, higher plateau. They’re still below the clouds, but Lak has vanished into the cover of the trees and the steepness of the mountain-side, all he can see is ocean, bits of forrest, sky. It’s breath-taking, especially as he’s still panicking slightly from their ‘flight’. 

Khaghashi leads them along a path, walking ahead with Teyla. It’s ten minutes, and then they are greeted by more people from Lak; some are official, from the council, but most seem to just be curious, milling around. Someone’s selling food and water. The path comes to an abrupt stop against a cliff and Rodney’s baffled, he pulls out his handheld scanner to see if the readings are really coming from here. They are, and just as Rodney’s about to ask, Khaghashi pulls down a heavy curtain of greenery and reveals a ragged tear, a gap about three feet across. This is not turning out to be his favourite mission. 

“The door of the dead, made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it?” Rodney asks. 

“Come on, Gimli,” John says, hoisting his pack and clapping Rodney on the shoulder before leading the way in. 

The light inside is dim, there are strange echoes creeping through the rock walls, and John mutters something mutinous about bugs, shining his torch over the rock. The first few metres are well-trodden, paths that seem to be used a lot, there’s an odd, musty smell, but it seems distant. Khaghashi leads them through winding passages and shows them a library, many empty rooms, some seem to be used for shelter. Nothing very interesting and no interesting readings. Eventually they rejoin the main path, and Khaghashi points. Toward the end is a door, half in the rock, it looks like a rockfall pushed things off centre. There’s a dark gap and a lot of silence. The smell is stronger, and gets worse as they move slowly forward, darkness deepening. Rodney scans the area. 

“Oh yeah, this is it,” he says, forgetting his dislike of small damp spaces and dark foreboding holes, for a moment. “There must be some kind of controls…”

He scans the rock and runs his hands over things, ignoring Sheppard backing up and freaking out about bugs again. He and Teyla start tugging stones away where they can, careful not to cause further sliding. Ronon helps, shouldering Rodney back from the doorway. They find the controls easily, they’re familiar by now with Ancient layouts. Lak might be higgledy-piggledy with no pattern and no reason, but the Ancients built to grids. Even in the dark, the fluttering lights of P90s, it’s a familiar enough layout Rodney starts to pull the panel apart and tuts when Ronon grunts and wedges himself into the gap, trying to get leverage to force the door open with his shoulder. It’s a race - Ronon’s force against Rodney’s lighter touch. They’re familiar with this, too, and it’s fun. It’s not like racing Zelenka to a solution, or playing chess against John (who should not be that good at it), but it’s enjoyable all the same. He talks as he works, taunting Ronon for not using his head. Ronon just laughs and redoubles his efforts. 

Rodney wins, this time. He lets out a quiet ‘ha!’ as the whole panel and door light up, but he quickly revises that when everything grinds, a trickle of sound surrounding them, air puffing out a gust of damp, smell intensifying. John says ‘uh oh’ unnecessarily sarcastically from behind them and grabs Rodney’s vest, yanking him back. They stumble-run out of the passage, backing up as fast as they can, and stand breathing hard. There’s another grinding sound and a single crash, then a silence. They venture back in, going slow, careful not dislodge anything. The door is open another few feet, full of shadows and dust. Rodney steps over the debris and gets hauled backwards again, against Ronon’s chest this time. 

“McKay,” Ronon growls, restraining him. 

“Yes, yes, sorry,” Rodney says, wriggling free and letting John take the lead, following close on his heels. 

Of course when John walks in everything comes humming and buzzing to life. 

“You know what this means?” Teyla says, bringing up their six and looking around. 

“Energy source,” Rodney says, bouncing over to the console. 

It’s a big room, but things have started to fall to bits, and the Lak people have stripped away some of the material. It looks like the cave is encroaching, growing into the room, stone showing through holes. There’s been a landslide and debris spilling in. It is a control centre, as described, which is excellent. He zones out on the rest of it, then, leaving Teyla to make nice with the locals, half listening to John on the radio to English - just because John tells a garbled and over-excited story about the plane and Rodney finds it amusing to listen to English trying to make heads or tails of it. Most of his attention is on the console. 


	2. The Journey Down

“We hypothesised some kind of global warming,” Rodney says, talking fast, yanking things apart as he talks, bringing up two view-screens, scrolling and flickering, file after file after file filling the space as Rodney flicks through things at a great rate. “So far things are panning out, but… I’m pretty sure that the Ancients did this. They forced a global warming.”

“Huh,” John says, watching the locals from the doorway. They’re milling around, curious about Rodney and the rest of them (mostly Rodney; something about the way he talks, John thinks). “On purpose, huh?”

“You’re not even listening,” Rodney says, dismissive. “I can’t get the life-signs detector to work, they seem to have internal sensors here… no, this isn’t showing the base here… ok this must be something else…”

“I’m listening, artificial global warming, whacky life-signs,” John says, rolling his eyes.

“Mm. Oh for- look, this is… ok, fine,” Rodney mutters, bustling between consoles. 

“What?” John asks, idly, not really caring. 

“It should be possible to seal this room, but I’m not sure why,” Rodney says. 

“And you thought you’d just go ahead and try it out,” John interrupts, drawling the way he knows irritates Rodney. “Don’t feel like being locked in a room with you today, Rodney.”

“Why not? I’m a delight. Anyway, no, actually I thought maybe I could follow the subroutine because if it seals then- shut up, Colonel. This place has been stripped, nothing works. The locals must’ve been in at some point, they’ve been harvesting materials from here, this room is open to the mountain,” Rodney says. “I think there’s a transporter somewhere, though. Hmm, looks like it goes down. Hmmm. Huh.”

A couple of kids are making their way down the path toward the rougher, less explored doorway John's stood in. Ronon taps his radio a couple times, John watches the kids a moment then radios a quick 'got them'. Ronon taps confirmation. One is very small, chubby naked legs and barefeet, clutching an older kid’s hand. 

“Hey guys,” John says.

“Hi,” the oldest says, climbing down the fallen rocks to John and peering around him into the room. 

“Better not come in,” John says. “It’s a bit unstable in here.”

“Unstable?!” Rodney squawks, yanking his hands away from the controls. The children all giggle at him, clustering together in front of John. 

“Yeah, Rodney. Like you said,” John reminds him, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh. Right, yes,” Rodney says. “Well, obviously, a little. I probably won’t cause any earthquakes. If we do I bet we could… hmm.”

“He hasn’t started an Earthquake. Yet. This time,” John says, and the children go wide-eyed - they know what earthquakes are, then. They peer around him again at Rodney, awed, and John can’t help grinning. If he didn’t have a reputation to uphold, he might look at McKay like that too, sometimes. “Ok guys, come on, back up a bit where it’s safer.”

His instinct is to say ‘don’t you have parents?’, but that’s something he quashed a long, long time ago. You don’t ask that, not in a warzone. Not anywhere in Pegasus, even these seemingly-peaceful planets which do okay. There’s always refugees and asylum seekers, and PX9-443 has an ‘open borders’ policy, according to Teyla’s intel from last time. Instead he just works on looks stern and implacable. More effective is Teyla coming out from another passage; she’s much better at sending them away to play. Somehow, John’s pretty sure, he always looks like he’s trying not to grin. He always tries for that unmoved soldier thing, too busy being on guard and alert and highly competent to even notice the kids. Never quite works. Teyla takes over Rodney-duty and John follows the children out, listening to them telling a story in three languages about some kind of earthquake god. They seem to think Rodney’s related in some way. He checks Ronon’s got nothing interesting before climbing up to higher ground and trying to raise English. 

“Shep, this is English, weak readable,” English answers, the second try. 

“Have you reached co-ordinates?” John asks. 

“Yes sir, just…” the transmission crackles and then falls silent. 

“Say again, after just,” John says, climbing a bit higher, checking back over his shoulder. Ronon gives him a thumbs up. 

“Just got here. There’s a platform of some kind, Martinez says she’s certain this is where… and the…” 

“Say again after ‘Martinez’, captain,” John says, a bit frustrated. 

“Martinez says she’s certain this is the place, she’s getting readings. She thinks this is - wait over,” English says. 

“Damn it English, c’mon,” John mutters, looking back to Ronon again. Ronon’s looking back toward the tunnel, with a distinctive set to his shoulders. John switches channels. “Rodney, this is Sheppard, come in. What’s the problem?”

“...and we should - yes, Sheppard, good, where are you standing right now?” Rodney says, voice high and a bit panicked. “Never mind just move, okay? I think I might have … shit.”

John moves as soon as Rodney asks where he’s standing, running back down the slope. Ronon’s up and trying to gather people, but they’re not moving, not nearly fast enough, and Rodney’s breathless and loud in his ear. John changes direction, leaving Rodney and Teyla, gathering some of the children scattering his way, shouting to the older teenagers and adults, waving them to run to Ronon. 

“Shep, this is English.”

“Wait, out!” John yells, stooping to lift one of the smaller and slower kids, grabbing the arm of another. 

He can’t stop easily now, they just barrel onwards towards the trees. The earth’s shaking, just a low kind of rumble but it does not bode well. Ronon’s back is ahead and as John shoots past Ronon grabs him, turning him sharply to the left, shoving him to go faster and running as well. They hit the tree-line and everyone’s stopped there. John doesn’t realise why until he’s nearly falling down the sharp drop-off. He’s saved by a sappling, leaning way over for a moment, clutching the tree and the toddlers, hanging a long, heart-stopping moment before Ronon’s wrapping an arm around his waist and dragging him back. They all turn, scanning for the danger Rodney’s warned them of. Nothing happens for long, long moments. 

“Rodney?” John asks, activating his radio again. 

“Not now colonel!” Rodney shouts. “Shit shit shit fuck. Um, John?”

“Yes?” John says, calming his breathing and forcing his voice calm and controlled. He stands, child still in his arms, earth rumbling beneath them, listening to Rodney. He can hear Teyla shouting something, panicked, Rodney shouting back, something about going down. “We’re receiving you, Rodney, go ahead.”

That’s it, though. The next second there’s a louder rumble, and then an explosion, and the sky goes grey and they’re pelted with skree and mud and John’s distracted calling everyone to get down and tucking the kids underneath someone and scrambling across the bodies of people who followed his order to those that didn’t, he and Ronon and two women running to the children stood in a line staring up. He drags someone down and someone else and then he’s tucked over three children and the whole mountain seems to be coming down on them and Rodney’s gone to static and there’s nothing John can do about it. 

He stays where he is for a long time, breathing through the dust and dirt, ignoring the crying and whimpering under and around him. There’s nothing he can do, not just yet. Someone screams, there’s a yell of pain. And then there’s just silence. No one moves, still, waiting for the dust to settle. There’s no more rumbling or explosions, though, and people start to shift. John gets up, ordering them all to stay put, and takes a look around. There’s dirt and stone everywhere, but nothing seems too bad. He makes for the tree-line and finds broken branches, more rubble, but not much else. Out there on the plateau, higher than he is but visible, there’s more wreckage and debris, the jagged crack in the wall has torn further open and there’s smoke pouring out. 

“Ronon!” he calls. “Doesn’t look like there’s gonna be any secondary explosions. Get people up here.”

He tries to get Rodney on the radio but there’s just static, still. He heads toward the crack, coughing as he jogs into the smoke. It’s darker inside, and clogged with dust as well as the rancid, thick smoke. He pulls his shirt over his mouth and nose and pushes onwards, shouting Rodney and then Teyla’s names. The passages to the right seem clearer, to the left they’re worse; whatever happened, happened that way, further into the mountain. There’s nothing come down, everything seems structurally sound, until he reaches the end of the passage where there used to be part of a doorway. Now there is just rubble.

“Rodney!” He shouts into the gloom, coughing and choking. 

He bends double, hands falling away from his face to brace himself against his knees as he coughs and coughs. He drags at some of the fallen rock, leaning as he carries on coughing, lightheaded with the smoke. All he achieves is a small avalanche, more dust and smoke. He gives up, unsure if he mightn’t just end up bringing the whole thing down on them. If they’re there. If they’re alive. He yells as much as he can, until he can’t get a sound out around the coughing. He stumbles back toward the entrance, light and air. Every breath in is a sharp pain, and every breath out is a harsh burst of coughing. He shuts his eyes and just focuses on getting out. He’ll come back, better equipped. He falls, the earth tilting away from him, but it’s into something soft, a very short fall, a relieved ‘oof’ greeting him. 

“…” he tries to say ‘thanks’ but nothing comes out. He hacks, hanging onto Ronon’s arm. 

“Smart guy,” Ronon mutters, dragging him further out of the smoke and holding him up while he coughs and coughs. “Khaghashi says that’s the only way in that room, I checked a bit into the other tunnels but it’s mostly just the control room.”

“Jesus,” John says, finally able to get some breaths, spitting and wiping his face. He pokes his radio and tries to raise Rodney or Teyla, coughing again between their names. 

“Tried that already, no one’s answering,” Ronon says. “Villagers have gone for some kind of air blower? Khaghashi’s gone down in the plane, they have a water station, something. Something on fire.”

“No idea,” John says. “Couldn’t see shit. The whole thing’s fallen in, I couldn’t get in the room. Something deeper in the mountain, I don’t know. Didn’t see anything on fire.”

“Okay. So, you used to do rescue missions, what’s next?” Ronon asks, steady and calm but John can hear the impatience underneath, the need to be going and doing something. John lets himself go a little bit limper, so Ronon can’t just run off. “You okay?”

“Yeah, something’s toxic in there,” John says. “Let me get my breath. I flew, Ronon, I didn’t… this is stuff for engineers, not pilots.”

“Yeah,” Ronon says. “Okay, what’s the priority? Get in and clear the air, or get them out? Is anything going to explode again?”

“Did Rodney tell you anything before he blew the fucking mountain up?”

“Just asked where you were, said ‘oh shit’ a lot, called the ancestors a lot of names,” Ronon says. “Teyla was shouting at him about getting to the water, but that’s too far away and no way out.”

John straightens up and looks around. The clearing is empty of people for the most part, but the children are back, hanging out in the trees and peering curiously at them. Damn it. John decides that acknowledging them will be read as encouragement; he pretends he can’t see them. His eyes follow the path of the debris up the slope. 

“I was up there, he told me to move,” John says, trying to sound more certain than he is. “There’s smoke up there, too, let’s check it out.”

He looks around again and spots one of the villagers trying to hurry the children away. Ronon whistles and everyone looks to him. 

“We’ll need cloths,” Ronon says, gesturing. “For around our faces. Water for drinking. Any maps you might have”

“Yeah,” John agrees. “Radios are still working, that’s good. I’ve got… no rope. So we’ll need that.”

The children nod solemnly and they and their guardian head down the mountain while Ronon and John head up toward the ridge where John was radioing English. John hails the captain while they go, thinking an update is in order. 

“Shep, thank god. What happened?” English asks. “We’re prepping the RoVs for a dive but I’m waiting on you. Over.”

“We’ve hit a snag here, captain, I think McKay blew a hole in the mountain,” John says, reaching the top of the ridge a little breathless and gazing into the gap where before there were trees. “Holy shit.”

“Whoa,” Ronon says. 

There’s smoke billowing out, and the ridge where they’re standing is subsiding into the now-gaping hole. Though, if Rodney really blew it up, he’d have expected something more. Really, this is just subsidence and smoke. Again, there’s no fire that he can see, either. 

“Uh,” John says. “Over.”

“A hole?” English asks. “Okay, do you need evac? Over.”

“No idea. Okay, look, send Qui and James back to the gate, let’s get started in case we do need aid from Atlantis. Sargeant Qui, you on radio? Over.”

“Sir, say again after ‘back to the gate’, over.”

“I say again gate, get started in case we need aid from Atlantis, is Sargent Qui on radio? Over.”

“Roger,” English says. 

“Colonel, this is Sargent Qui. Over.”

“I want check-ins every ten minutes as you head back, let’s make sure we can reach you by radio. I’ll update on what we need as and when,” John says. “Over.”

“Wilco, out,” Qui says. 

“Captain Aida, stay where you are for now, we can use you as a relay station if needed. Prep for that dive, go ahead at your discretion, over,” John says. 

“Wilco, sir. Let us know if you have any news of Teyla or the doc, okay? Out.”

“What do you think, Ronon?” John says. Ronon’s worked his way around the side of the hole, peering in through the smoke. “Way in? Captain Aida, we’ll check in when we have news, unless needing a relay. Out.”

“Can’t tell,” Ronon says. “Not to the control room.”

“I think there’s a transporter, that'd be another exit. If they’re inside there, I think they’re dead, so let’s work on the assumption that two of the smartest people we know hopped through that second exit, okay?” 

“Let’s check the control room again, let’s be sure,” Ronon says.

They head back to the plateau, John trying and failing to hail Rodney or Teyla again a few times. This has been his job for years now, and it’s not even the first time he’s lost contact with close friends. It’s not even the first time he’s lost contact on a rescue with someone he thought might be more than a friend, either. It’s never easy, and seeing as there’s nothing to do but wait for the moment he takes that moment to let a little of his encroaching anxiety out. He leans his arms against a tree, rests his head there, and focuses on breathing. 

“You good?” Ronon asks. 

“Freaking out,” John says. “Give me a second.”

“You think they’re okay?” Ronon asks, and he sounds much less calm and much less sure of himself than he has so far. John turns away from his tree and his self indulgence and finds a smile. 

“Yeah,” he says, controlling his breathing again, putting every ounce of certainty into his voice. Ronon nods jerkily, so John holds his arm to steady him. “Yes, they got in that transporter. Hell knows where they went, but they’re going to be okay and we’ll find them. That hole? It’s not close to the control room. The smoke was thicker in other parts of the cave system, not near the door.”

“You think?” Ronon says. He sounds wry, but also like he wants John to keep lying to him. 

“Sure,” John says. “You think McKay’d have been freaking out about me if he’d been in danger himself?”

Ronon laughs, a little of the tension easing from his shoulders. The answer to that, the unspoken ‘yes he would have, has done, probably always will’, hangs in the air between them for a moment. John squeezes Ronon’s arm. 

“They’ll be okay,” Ronon says. 

“Besides, Teyla’s there, she’s a quick thinker. Between them, they have great odds,” John says. Ronon still doesn’t quite look convinced. “We’re not losing them. Not this time.”

That’s all the time they have for reassurances - the air vibrates signalling Khaghashi’s return, and even with their missing team-mates, John can’t help but stop and be astounded at the god damned flying whale. It’s beyond anything he’s seen before. The villagers are also trekking back, laden with items requested and otherwise. The next ten minutes is all hustle, setting up a table out here with Ronon’s radio, equipping themselves and another two-man team to go into the caves. John has a spare radio in his tac vest, he gives that to the secondary team. Sargent Qui checks in. 

They’ll be heading back to search for their missing team memeber, the others will be laying down water to keep things from spreading, in case of the fire there has so far been no traces of, save the endless, thick smoke. They have two tubes, some kind of huge plant’s dipper. Big and rounded. Each has a whirring, cog-powered fan, you turn a handle and the whole thing growls and shakes like it’s going to explode, and then there’s a whoosh of air. They test their equipment, and then it’s time. Sargent Qui checks in again. John and Ronon head straight for the door to the control room, but it’s hidden by rocks. They pull things away, using the scanners this time to avoid causing the avalanches John did last time, coughing even with the blower and the cloths around their faces. There’s no gap. 

“The door’s gone,” Ronon gasps, sweat beading his hairline. John’s too busy coughing to tell him about the sealing room Rodney hypothesised but it’s good; maybe they had enough time to escape. A little extra time bought by this.

They drag some more of the rubble out of the way but there are ominous rumbles and cracking sounds, things shifting. Ronon pulls out a big stone and freezes, more rubble coming down, the ceiling groaning and a crack running wider. They step back, shining their torches in. They can’t see anything, just rock, but the crack is in the door, and they can see in just a bit. Enough to see it’s all rock and rubble. 

“So much for sealed,” Ronon says, then yells and hits the wall, lashing out. 

“Got out,” John croaks, barely able to catch his breath in the smoke. Ronon starts coughing, breathing too hard in his anger. John joins him for a burst then swallows it back. “They got out.”

“So we’ll go the other way. Down the hole,” Ronon suggests. 

John nods, unable to talk around more coughing. Ronon haul him out. He has to stand and cough and hack for five minutes while Ronon arranges ropes and compiling climbing equipment from their tac vests, packing a first-aid kit and water and, with a grin to John, snacks. If they’re going exploring, they won’t have ready access to things. John nods his approval and coughs some more, retching, stomach still unsettled from earlier. He misses Rodney, warm and letting him sneak close and getting him out of sight. And Teyla, too, sitting guard, her gaze passing over him carefully, just in case she’s needed.

“Colonel, are you well?” Khaghashi asks, coming over, breaking him out of it. They have the third radio and are listening to something else at the same time so John just nods. 

“Caught some smoke,” Ronon says, coming to pound John unhelpfully on the back. It’s dying down, anyway.

John gets a burst of static. 

“That you, Qui? Radio check,” John says, straightening, coughing sharply. 

“... this… sir?” 

“Sargent Qui, this is Shep, you’re coming through strong but distorted, adjust frequency,” John says. “Over.”

“...the cloud… is this better, sir?” 

“Say again, all before ‘is this better’, over,” John says. 

“Shep, this is Qui, there’s some kind of cloud that’s fucking with the signal, are you getting me now? Over.”

“Weak readable. We haven’t got any news, I have no idea what’s happened so can you just tell them to prepare as if it’s an earth quake and explosion, medical team and evac if possible. We can’t bring a jumper through… tell them to bring Radek, he’s good at trouble-shooting he might have ideas for travel. Find out how far out the Ellis is with the Apollo, they might be able to help, over.”

“Wilco. Earth quake, explosion, medical and Radek, update on Ellis. Over.”

“Roger. Out,” John says. “We ready, Ronon?”

“Waiting on you,” Ronon says. “If they were in that room…”

“They weren’t,” John says, firmly. “They got out. There was nothing there, they got out. They went down, we’ll go down.”

He’s got a hand on John’s shoulder and his gaze is sharp and worried. John wraps his face again, in the fresh cloth Khaghashi hands him, and ignores Ronon’s concern, tying the rope Ronon’s prepared into a harness, coiling another over his shoulder for the hike up the ridge. He checks in with Khaghashi as they reach the top of the ridge, and the secondary team. They still haven’t found a source for the smoke but they’ve found a method of stopping the spread that is reportedly effective, so they’re heading deeper, hoping to find more. 

“Sheppard, you good?” Ronon asks, once he’s off the radio, gazing down into the hole. 

“Yeah, just feeling old,” John says. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

Ronon and John walk backwards into the smoking maw of the mountain, rappelling, the carabina and 8-descender John added to the tac vest this tour coming in handy. He calls a halt as they descend half the length of their ropes and they still haven’t reached any kind of solid ground. They’re tethered securly, but the edges of the hole are still subsiding and wherever they hit the sides with their feet they send more cascading around themselves. They can’t see for smoke, Ronon has the blower over his shoulder and regularly spins, pushing out into the dim smoky hole, trying to get a view, but it’s no good. John takes the blower, listening as Qui crackles and pops through another check in before pushing off and trying for himself to pierce the smothering clouds of smoke. He can see the sides of the hole, dust and dirt and skree giving way to rock somewhere metres below, but nothing solid to land on. Ronon waits impatiently, rappelling a few feet further, looking up at John then peering down as he clears the fog. 

“Nothing,” John says, catching up. “I think the walls become more solid, we might be able to climb down, but I’m worried how deep we are. Hang on, let’s see if - Lak search, this is Shep, check in. Over.” 

“Yes colonel Sheppard, hello, this is Yash, we have penetrated the cave system as far as we know it, the rest of the tunnels are unstable and unexplored but we know they extend far into the mountain, the source of the smoke must be further in. Nothing is on fire, and it is beginning to disperse.”

John waits, but there’s nothing more. 

“Right. Any sign of our friends? Over,” John asks, but the answer is no and the Lak people refuse to either try the tunnels they’re not sure of, or go back to try and force the door. John tries to raise Rodney again then hangs, waiting for his breathing to even out. 

“Sheppard,” Ronon says. 

“Yes, okay,” John says. “I think we carry on. Khaghashi’s maps suggested that the rest of the instalation really was inaccessible, we don’t know where this goes but it’s the only thing I can think. Besides trying to blow that door with C4, but the whole thing is unstable, we’re just as likely to bring the rest of it down on their heads as rescue them. No, we’ll explore this way, and hope we find the other end of that transporter.”

Ronon grunts, shooting down the rope a few metres at a time. John goes a little slower, trying still to clean the smoke. It’s not making him cough so much, and Yash seems to be right about it dispersing, but as they get deeper it gets thicker again and stings his eyes and hands. He makes Ronon wrap his hands in clothes and does the same for himself, ignoring Ronon’s rolled eyes. They reach the extent of their rope, but by now the sides are rock, hewn roughly by whatever exploded… or maybe not. John gets the torch out of his vest and directs it over the walls. 

“Ronon, hang on,” John says. “Take a look here.”

“Yeah, this looks old,” Ronon says. “Ancestors did it. I noticed before.”

“Right,” John says, annoyed that Ronon hadn’t mentioned it. 

He tamps the anger down along with his worry and fear, stuffing it neatly away, and secures a new rope to what looks like a good spot, transfering onto his new line. Ronon watches him then does the same and they carry on, deeper and deeper into the earth, swallowed up by smoke. John’s coughing again, now, and he loses his grip on his ring and falls a few feet. His cry of alarm is cut off as he hits ground, legs giving way and falling in a heap, gasping for breath until he’s coughing again. 

“Sheppard! John!” Ronon calls, alarm turning to terror in a flash. 

“I’m good,” John manages. “I hit bottom. Come on down.”

Ronon comes all in one go, hands rushing to feel over John, rubbing hard over bone and muscle to check for damage. John thinks of all the people Ronon’s lost and stands still, letting it wash over him, breathing through his coughing until it fades. 

“The equipment would’ve caught me in a minute anyway,” John says. “I’m fine.”

He turns in a circle, blowing smoke away to make it easier to breathe. His radio crackles and snarls, but nothing comes through - there’s a ton of rock above them, it seems they’ve reached the threshold for contact. He leaves Ronon for a minute, climbing back up his rope until he can get Khaghashi, letting them know they’ve found the bottom and asking them to relay their position to Sargent Qui if he tries to check in again. When he gets back to the bottom Ronon’s pulled out a torch and is examining the wall. He turns and beckons John over, running the small light over the wall and John breathes in sharply; the rock gives way to smooth stone and an arch, marking the opening to a long, dark tunnel. 

“Cool, huh?” Ronon says. “Hopefully Teyla and Rodney are deep and that’s why we can’t reach them.”

“Yeah,” John agrees, on both counts, using his P-90, which has a slightly wider beam than the small torches they carry. “Hell. This isn’t on Khaghashi’s maps.”

“It’s going down,” Ronon says. 

“It’s Ancient, it must be part of the installation; the smoke that was there is here; this place is all linked up, it’s huge. What the hell was it? Big is good, though, and it’s still intact… they probably came out somewhere like this, and are just waiting around for us to rescue them. Probably having a nice rest, with MREs and power bars, Rodney had his pack so they’ll have plenty of food. Um, are there any other passages?” John asks, turning a circle. 

Ronon shakes his head and John can’t see any signs; he takes Ronon’s word that he already checked more closely and turns back to the corridor they have found, blowing the smoke upwards again. There is smoke in the passageway, but the ceiling is so high, it’s all hovering up there, trying to escape. As they look dubiously into the dark there’s a great gust of wind, stinking of salt and burning plastic and rot, and the smoke billows around them in a roar before being pushed on out into the hole. 

“What the…” John can’t finish his thought, too busy coughing again. 

“Let’s go,” Ronon says, voice hoarse and tight. 

John nods and takes their six, letting Ronon lead the way at a light jog, coughing as he goes, setting a good pace; they need to find their missing people. 

* * *

Ten minutes later they’re still winding steadily down, further and further, there’s no answer from Rodney or Teyla, their radios barely work. The silence and darkness is becoming oppressive, and while the smoke is thinning, every now and then there’ll be another gust of wind. Everything’s damp and smells like salt and something rotten, like garbage. Ronon’s turned intent and frustrated, not one for talking at the best of times he’s gone entirely quiet save for angry mutterings at the walls. John starts humming, falling into a familiar marching step to keep up with Ronon’s jogging, losing himself in the monotony like at training. 

Twenty minutes later, they’ve broken into a proper run, Ronon still leading. There’s just this one corridor, and John thinks he should call it. They’re lost, as lost as you can be in one single winding passage. Rodney and Teyla should have tried to reach them, something, anything. The silence is boding not well. This passage is big, empty, and endless; no transporter, no missing team. He sings a Johnny Cash medly under his breath to keep himself company, trying to banish the helplessness, the intensity radiating off Ronon’s back and shoulders warning him to leave Ronon be. Do not halt, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. He coughs as he runs, coughs as he sings, given up turning the crank of the air-blaster. The gusts of wind are a relief, even with the fetid stench they bring, because he can get a clearer breath.

Half an hour after that they’re sprinting, Ronon shouting in dismay every time they turn a corner and find just more corridor stretching interminably ahead of them. Then his shout is cut off sharply and John puts on a burst of speed, Johnny Cash forgotten, and sees Ronon shooting down through a gap, eyes wide and wild. John stops where the path falls away, looking frantically for anything that might help him, yelling Ronon’s name into the hole that’s opened in the middle of the path. It’s wet and the salt and rot is coming from down there. He can’t hear Ronon, can’t get anything from his radio and anyway, Ronon hasn’t got his. That seems stupid, now, down here in the dark. John looks around, patting down his vest, but there is nothing useful for fishing missing colleagues out of sudden holes. He should remedy that. 

He peers in, drops the blower, switches his light pack from his back onto his front, takes a deep breath and launches himself after Ronon, determined not to lose anyone else to this labyrinthine, decaying Ancient crap-hole. Maybe Teyla was right, maybe it’s a city, it’s big enough. Whatever happens next, he decides that this is fine, this is his destiny. Shooting down what amounts to a damp, smoky water-slide, coughing, arms crossed over his chest, his pack, and his head tucked in. This is… not his destiny at all. It’s dark and everything whirls around him and he screams, fear swamping him. 

He controls his breathing and doesn’t panic, doesn’t try and reach for anything, makes himself a tight, thin arrow, and closes his eyes as he picks up speed. He feels like he’s falling forever, faster and faster, and he’s lost all sense of up or down, left or right as he rolls up the sides of the tunnel, smoke thickening. He thinks, idly, of his mother, her long fragile dresses brushing his arms as he tries to tuck himself closer to her impatient side as they walk, until he’s swung up onto her shoulder. Her arms around him, too infrequently but treasured for that, safe beside her. He feels the sunshine of those last, hot summers. 

He realises only gradually that he’s slowing, the tunnel evening out. He’s brought back to the present by another gust of wind, rougher here, pushing at him and slowing him further, the smell stronger and coming with a rumbling kind of roar. He opens his eyes in wide startlement as he shoots out through a cavernous opening and into water, a great wave drowning him. He yells and coughs and struggles but he’s been falling too long and can’t find up or down until strong arms drag him out and he gasps, coughing up the water, spitting salt and grossness into the foot of sea water he finds himself in.

“No need to be dramatic. Ronon didn’t try and drown himself in a puddle.”

“He did give you a black-eye with his flailing and came out roaring like a nekka.”

“What the hell is a nekka? Do I want to know? Actually, no.”

John opens his eyes and gapes. Rodney and Teyla are there. Teyla’s sat cross-legged on a rock, looking serene, hair soft fuzzing curls instead of its usual straightness, but looking absolutely fine. Glistening, even. She’s wet, John realises. Rodney’s stood, he looks like he’s been pacing, he’s got a tablet clasped to his chest. There’s another rock, scattered bits of two radios spread out there, another tablet, bits of Ancient crystal. John looks around the room, up at the cavernous ceilings, arching above them, listening to the dull echoing roar. 


	3. The Journey In

John gathers his P-90 and a little bit of dignity, and splashes out of the puddle. It’s only about two feet deep, he’s glad of it to cushion his fall and nearly drown him. Ronon claps him on the shoulder, grinning. 

“I found them,” Ronon says. Rodney opens his mouth, surely to get in a good rant about how falling into and then out of a drain doesn’t count. They have some kind of one-upmanship going on. 

“Where are we?” John says, to derail that. Also because he wants to know - it’s a huge room, half-cave really the Ancients have built into it but haven’t completely blocked the mountain out. “What happened? Did you make the mountain explode, Rodney?”

“Yes, yes, of course I did, and I did it on purpose just to keep you on your toes,” Rodney snaps, rolling his eyes. “It didn’t explode and it wasn’t the whole mountain. It turns out the two instalations are much more closely linked than we previously thought, in fact it probably couldn’t count as two instalations and Teyla was probably more accurate when she said ‘city’, though I’m not sure anyone lived here unless they were working here… anyway, the life-signs detector doesn’t work because of minerals in the rocks, and their rigged-up sensors get around that, but they monitor the ocean, not the base we were in. Pretty useless.”

“So you blew it up,” John says, making his way to Teyla’s rock and sinking down to sit. 

His cloth mask fell off in the water, but he undoes the ones around his hands. He sets the pack beside him, next to Ronon’s that’s already there. Ronon comes and sits, too, and John ignores the tension in his shoulders, checking him over for injuries. He finds scrapes, Ronon’s shoulder and arms especially, like he tried to grab the sides of the tunnel. Rodney’s talking but John’s not listening, taking Ronon’s hands and untying the cloths there, checking for more injuries, finding salve in the medical pack.

“I’m fine,” Ronon growls, tugging out of John’s grip and getting up, walking in a circle around the stone before sitting again. John shrugs and puts the med kit back away.

“You found them, we didn’t lose anyone else,” John offers. It’s his own fear, but he imagines it’s magnified ten-fold for Ronon, who has lost so much. John refuses the pity and empathy of it, keeping any sentiment out of his voice. It’s facts, they’re soldiers, it’s the job. Ronon nods. He still looks tense. “Relax your shoulders.”

Ronon glares at him but does as he’s told, breathing out long and hard and coughing at the end, then glaring some more. He looks a little better, though, so John passes him a canteen of water and glances at Teyla, who gives him a slight nod; she thinks Ronon’s fine, so, okay. She gets up and touches Ronon’s arm, and gets pulled into a hug and then released. Good. John focuses on Rodney again, who’s giving him an irritable look. It’s hiding something softer, though, and John’s heart squeezes, he really wants to just hug Rodney, check he’s okay, god he’s so very alive and grumpy looking and familiar. Ronon can do the hugging, John’s pretty sure if he de-compartmentalises anything right now, his whole system of keeping everything locked up tight and under control is gonna go the way of the mountain. 

“Okay, you asked a question so I’m answering,” Rodney says, hands on his hips. “The least you could do is listen. I have powerbars, Ronon, here.” Rodney thrusts a handful of bars at Ronon and Ronon hauls him into his own crushing hug, very quickly. “Very nice, thank you, um. As I was saying,” Rodney says, brushing himself off and flushing slightly. “Um. Right. I worked out the thing with the sensors, I thought they’d be useful maybe they could be recalibrated and show us how big the place was, and maybe if I could work out what the interference was we could use our equipment and find out if there’s more Ancient building on the planet. But, well, the system was set to do a sort of restart, whenever it was turned on after being shut down for a while it set off a sort of... flushing.”

“Flushing?” John prompts. Rodney grimaces. 

“Kind of. You came down the chimney,” Rodney says. “It was a little blocked. I… unblocked the chimney?”

“You destroyed the side of a mountain is what you did,” John says. “Toxic smoke, the whole bit.”

He pulls his knees up to rest his elbows on so he can prop up his head. Now that he’s still for five minutes it’s beginning to ache a little, but more than that as his body gets used to the state of not-smoke, his stomach is beginning to twist and cramp. Stupid abdominal surgery. Teyla sits beside him, looking tired and like she’s already heard this. She probably pointed out the exploding mountain thing, too. He gives her a little smile and she smiles back. 

“Yes, well,” Rodney says, sounding a little bit miserable. “Was anyone… was anyone hurt?”

“No, everyone’s fine,” John says, letting it go. He doesn’t want to actually hurt Rodney, just poke at him a bit. Teyla smiles at Rodney this time. “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Only you two were lost, what happened to you?”

“The control room sealed itself,” Rodney says. “But it wasn’t - there are holes in the roof. I realised before it exploded that the seal wouldn’t work so when I saw the system trying to do its thing… They sent water somewhere, fresh water. I’d worked out the two sites were linked, and...”

“It was very quick thinking,” Teyla praises.

“Yes. It was Teyla’s idea really,” Rodney says. “I just worked out the water supply thing, it was you who said we should pretend to be water. I thought she was being all mystical.”

John laughs, imagining Rodney freaking out, trying to work out how the hell he was meant to ‘be water’. Rodney glares. 

“We came through the transporter,” Teyla says. “It brought us here, not to the other site.”

“Which, the Ancients created tides, this place is, as I said, going to flood. All the waste from the under-water site will be washed in here, all the extraneous crap from oxygen production filling up in here before being forced up the chimney and out,” Rodney says. “This is a flawed, flawed system they created. I don’t know why they stopped off here, it’s probably just the transport system, maybe they needed to come here as well as the other site, though why the hell anyone would want to come here, and there must be another transport but there _isn’t _we _looked_, and-”

“So let’s just go where the oxygen is,” John says, interrupting. 

Rodney gestures at the far wall and John goes to take a look. It’s opaque, clearly there are doors near the bottom but they’re firmly shut, and John can see the ocean out there. It’s dark, it looks cold. 

“Ah,” he says. 

“Exactly,” Rodney says. “It’s all flooded. Like I said, only the one transporter in here and it’s not taking us anywhere useful, and out there, water.”

John takes a seat on the rock again, and Rodney joins them. They sit, damp and bedraggled, the only sounds Ronon sorting through the three powerbar wrappings, licking off the chocolate. John thinks he should be more worried about this than he is; they’re trapped miles and miles under-ground, no way to contact anyone back up top, no way to go through the transporter not if they don’t want to be buried under all that rock, no way back up the slide he and Ronon shot down. Even though his and Ronon’s heroic rescue has turned out more in the way of just joining the others in a trap, he can’t bring himself to get worked up about it. He grins at Rodney and Teyla, glad to have found them. Then again, they’re trapped between rock and water, he can already see the water level rising, and there’s no way out.

* * *

Rodney, John and Teyla are on the rock, Rodney is feverishly stabbing at the tablet and talking to himself, Teyla’s meditating, John’s watching Ronon as he paces the walls of their cage, hand against the opaque wall every time he reaches it, splashing through a widening puddle that spreads out as fifteen minutes pass, twenty minutes, half an hour, forty minutes. 

Rodney pulls up and trawls through all the data he got from the control room before everything blew up, searching for anything that might get them out of this, switching to his scanner now and then to take new readings. It’s strange, this isn’t a control room, it’s just a big chamber, part of a filtration and recycling system, but there are low energy readings. 

Ronon reaches the opaque wall again and growls in frustration, hitting the wall, then yelps and jumps back, falling into a crouch, hands suddenly full of knives. John slides off the rock and joins him, standing at Ronon’s shoulder, watching the water. Rodney follows, slower, hesitating, searching the water.

“What is it?” John asks, softly. 

Teyla stands at his shoulder, both of them ready to fight whatever it is that has Ronon on edge. She did a whole lot of pacing and searching when they arrived, but once they were certain there was no transport except back up, she got all still and quiet and calm. It startles Rodney a little to have her alert and moving again, back to quick sharpness. He himself stays about a foot further back, where he’s useful, trying to get some readings through the water. It’s still not working to detect life-signs, or anything much, even with the information from the database helping with his calibrations.

“Thought I saw something in the water,” Ronon says, straightening slowly and approaching the wall again, pressing his hand there. He draws back and gives it a thump, but then shrugs. “Might’ve been the light.”

John nods. Rodney doesn’t think it _was _just the light, not for a moment. For one thing, there is no light, not out there. In here there is, the rock walls seem to be glowing. As the water encroaches, the light gets brighter, inching up the stone with the creeping damp. Something to do with the exploding moss, maybe… but that’s all in here. Out there is nothing but darkness and deeper darknesses. If there is light, it’s coming from some _thing_. That is not an encouraging thought; swimming moss seems highly unlikely, anything that _glows _can only be bad news. Nightmare fish... Rodney looks out into the ocean, wondering if they’re right at the bottom, if there’s more water beneath them. He shudders.

“If the control room up there was part of the installation under the sea,” John says, then stops, tapping lightly on the barrier between them and ocean. “Is it far?”

“Yes,” Rodney says, frustrated. “I have no maps, okay, colonel? But my guess from the layout I got a glimpse of up there, and from what I’ve been able to glean from the broken controls down here, those doors would have lead to the underwater control station, but it’s a long walk.”

“We had some maps from Khaghashi, but just the higher tunnels. Nothing to suggest a whole entire city half under-water. Transporter?” John says. 

“Oh, right, why didn’t I think to check?” Rodney says, sarcastic and caustic with rising annoyance as they creep up two hours trapped here. He wants out, he wants light and sunshine, even rain would be okay. “I’ve been here for hours and I hadn’t even considered a transporter! How silly, oh gosh oh golly!”

He’s too high-pitched and too panicked and John’s watching him, just _watching_, an odd look on his face, almost… voracious. Rodney gasps for breath, losing his words. John takes hold of his arm. 

“I thought you were dead,” John blurts, eyes on Rodney’s face, taking him in. “Dead men don’t panic.”

“I’m not panicking!” Rodney says, clutching John’s shoulder, sucking in breaths. There’s so much water out there, over them, and he’s trapped again and he’s going to drown again and he can’t believe this is happening _again_. “Sam took her shirt off to distract me last time I was dying at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Oh my god,” John says, letting go of him and now he’s short and sharp and back to usual, none of the gazing and dopey eyes. He smacks Rodney’s shoulder. “Get it together, McKay. No one’s taking their clothes off.”

“It was disappointingly prosaic,” Rodney says, calming down, struck again by that. “She wasn’t even being sexy.”

“We already checked about the transporter, John, it is out there. Rodney believes it is in the passages, the only one here goes up. Are you speaking of Sam Carter, Rodney?” Teyla asks. 

“Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t really her, of course, just my dying brain conjuring fantasies. Delusional male fantasies, I think Jen called my Sam thing,” Rodney babbles. John and Ronon and Teyla are all looking at him with varying degrees of disgust, amusement, and resignation. “I didn’t imagine anything very sexy, that’s my point. She was just there.”

“I’ll take my shirt off,” Ronon says, shrugging. “If you like.”

“No, thanks for the offer,” Rodney says. 

“Shall we now get back to the problem of escape?” Teyla suggests.

“We can’t climb up the chimney,” John says, leaping on the chance to change the subject and get back to his stupid suggestions. 

“No, you shot through a mountain, it’s quite a long way which means you came really fast. It’s steep, and there’s air currents,” Rodney says. 

He worked out about twenty minutes ago that the artificial tides created by valves that let the water in and out of this chamber also create air currents that push and pull through the chimney. He still isn’t sure what all of this is in aid of. Energy, getting rid of waste, something to do with the oxygen production. Everything’s too broken for reliable data.

“Oh, hey, this moss, the glowing moss? I am just thinking, it seems to be the primary light source throughout this place. They’re trying things out, trying to find alternative technologies. Isn’t that nice? Moss for light! Genius! And why the fuck didn’t they put in a transporter!” Rodney shouts at the walls 

“The moss is pretty cool,” John says. 

“It explodes,” Rodney says, shortly. “That’s where the smoke comes from. As it dries, once the water’s gone, it disintegrates. This place was closed up and effectively sealed for a long time, it kind of exploded when I opened things again. Pretty sure that was the moss.”

“So we can’t just walk across to the other bit of the installation. Or swim,” John says. 

“It’s hard to map that twisting corridor onto what we saw up above, especially with the boats and the flying,” Ronon says, thoughtful, “but my guess is that your captain, and his installation thing, is approximately ten, fifteen miles that way.”

He points out the opaque wall and to the left. John nods, accepting that. They’ve all seen Ronon map terrain as they walk it, Rodney asked John once and John said comparing with his own calculations and the readings from puddle-jumpers, Ronon’s pretty accurate. Rodney worked out for himself that Ronon’s more accurate if he uses Satedan measurements and isn’t trying to translate. They can’t hold their breaths for fifteen miles, even if Ronon’s off a little they still can’t hold their breaths. _Nearly _fifteen miles might as well _be _fifteen miles. They all gaze out at the ocean, standing in a ragged line, Teyla’s resting her hand against the wall. She taps gently while she thinks, the vibration, sending ripples out, and this time Rodney sees it. They all do. They take a step back as one, staring. 

“What,” Rodney says, bug-eyed. 

John takes a step forward, making himself level with Ronon, who’s once more armed to the teeth with sharp things, crouched a bit. Rodney stays back, focuses as hard as he can on the oscillations, trying to get a fix. He realises as he watches that he can’t see it because it’s so big, he’s looking at too small a point. John raises his P90 and presses it to the wall, turning on the torch. The light’s broken by the opaque material and then by the water, refracted. The thing out there passes through the beam, mottled and misshapen, shifting and concaving with the water. A sucker the size of a golf-ball flickers in the beam, another, the twist of a tentacle, and John makes a quiet, strangled sound.

“It’s like an octopus,” Rodney says, fear chased away by fascination. _Maybe Martinez had been right_. 

He moves closer to the wall, trying to get a better look, and Teyla turns the torch on her own P90. With both their lights they can see a little more, curious tentacles against the wall, reaching for the light (or the warmth?). A huge head presses against the dull glass (it’s not glass, actually, and what a moment to get distracted by that thought), expanding and collapsing and then rolling away with the current, an eye wide and flat stares back at them and Rodney’s heart picks up again and he has to fight the urge to step away. It’s behind the barrier, and while curious about them it doesn’t seem aggressive, just big and slow and alien. Ronon loses interest and is does another circuit of the cavern while the rest of them watch the creature.

“Sheppard,” Ronon says. 

John peels himself away from the wall and disappears around some pillars. Rodney stares for a moment longer then follows. They’re stood by the big double doors he and Teyla came through, now firmly shut and flashing a dull red. Ronon’s not looking at the doors, he’s looking to the right. The water’s up to almost a foot, now, the ground sloping gently away from Rodney, and Ronon’s stood in it, trousers and boots wet. He’s looking at a bare patch of the wall, no moss or mould. The damp has spread up the wall through the moss, but that patch is dry. 

“What is it?” John asks. Ronon shrugs. 

“Interesting,” Rodney says, pushing past John and splashing into the water. “Yes, this is intriguing, get me those leads and the crystal that’s intact, off the stone.”

Teyla gets them and she, John and Ronon stand in a loose semi-circle around Rodney as he hums and taps at his tablet, running through data. He recalibrates his scanner yet again and finally gets a clue. He snaps his fingers for a knife from Ronon and pries the wall away, revealing a small control panel. 

“Ah-ha! I thought so. They would protect the _electronics _but not bother to put any safeguards for people who might get stuck here,” Rodney says, rolling his eyes. He can _feel _John wanting to make a comment about Rodney’s own priorities but he must make do with an exchanged look with Teyla. They always think Rodney doesn’t notice these things. They’re wrong, he just ignores them.

“Is it useful?” Ronon asks, shifting restlessly.

“Maybe,” Rodney says, bent over his screen and frowning. “Oh. Well, no, not useful, this is for the system that we rode down here out of the control room. I could probably get us back up there, but like I said the ceiling was falling in, we’d just end up buried alive. Ancient transporters only go between two specific points.”

“Not useful,” Ronon says, turning and moving off again. “Maybe there are more control thingies.”

John and Teyla follow and for twenty fruitless minutes they examine the walls minutely, looking for more hidden panels. Rodney tries to get more out of the panel they have found, but it’s very limited, there are just three settings, instead he finds himself ruminating on why the panels are hidden. If there’s a reason; the Ancients were perverse bastards. He turns and helps look for other panels, runs his fingers over damp wall after damp wall, scrambling over skree and debris, wading through increasingly deep water. 

“Over here,” Teyla says. 

She’s back at the opaque wall, Rodney hadn’t bothered to look there because he didn’t think anyone would hide a panel in floor to ceiling glass barriers. Apparently he was wrong. The water’s reached even here and is starting to ebb and flow like a tide, making waves. It’s up to their knees almost. Rodney examines the bit of glass Teyla points out, nodding to himself, and there’s another ten minutes trying to check if it really is anything, if there’s any way to get to it if it is something, and how not to flood them all, before he takes a knife from Ronon and pries away a square of glass. There’s another layer of glass in there, and controls. Ah. Perfect. Rodney uses the crystal from before to connect his pad and Ancient scrolls down the screen. 

“Huh,” Rodney says, minimizing the screen and pulling up another, then pushes some of the buttons on the control panel. The wall wavers, then solidifies, going dark. “Ok. That’s not particularly useful. Ok, ok, this is interesting, though, this might... let’s try…”

He;s pretty sure… because internal... hmm. He presses another series of buttons and the doors slide open. John’s stood in just precisely the wrong spot; icy cold water floods him, crashing into him and sending him sprawling, the wall of water washing him away. Rodney was stepping back away from the water to keep his tablet safe, but he changes direction to try and grab John and almost falls flat on his face. Teyla and Ronon are much more effective, fighting the strong current as more and more water comes flushing out of the passage. Rodney puts his trust in them to find John and turns back, checking his pad. No, he was right, there are internal doors throughout that corridor, there is only a certain amount of water, they’re not going to drown. There is a leak, the water is going to steadily rise, but for now they should be safe. He turns the wall opaque again and pulls his tablet off, putting the panel back in place. He can hear John coughing, so that’s good. 

“McKay!” John shouts, hoarse and reassuringly angry and alive. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Rodney says, turning. John’s held up by Teyla and Ronon. He looks bedraggled and pissed off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t, I thought the doors were three feet the other way, sorry. Optical illusion.” 

“Damn it, Rodney,” John says, glaring. He’s got some kind of straggly weed in his hair. Rodney’s lips twitch. “Do not laugh at me.”

“Ah. um,” Rodney tries, giggles, gets a grip. “Shall we go? This is a temporary solution, we’re still drowning, just slower.”

“Maybe we will find the transporter,” Teyla says, encouragingly. 

Ronon’s grinning openly, picking bits of ocean out of John’s hair, but his grip on John is firm and gentle, Rodney can tell. He and Teyla pack everything up, dividing between the three packs, leaving Teyla free of luggage to move lighter and easier, one of them at least swift in case of a fight. When they’re done, he turns back to John and feels guilt and worry for a moment. 

“Are you alright?” he asks. 

“Yes,” John says, sighing. “I’m fine. Just wet.”

“We should go, then,” Rodney says. “Um, Ronon, do you want to take the six? Teyla go ahead?”

John rolls his eyes at Rodney giving orders, or at Rodney’s not wanting to go first, which is purely practical. He needs to be free to check the scanner and find the next panel, he can’t be alert for danger and all that. He walks with John in the middle, shoulders brushing. 

“There is something in the water,” Teyla murmurs, as they all pass her, heading into the passage. 

Rodney remembers a time when that would have sent him into a panic. It still does, actually, but he’s thankfully distracted, calibrating his scanner and picking up more of the low energy readings. He pretends he’s cool and collected because he’s brave and not because he’s busy, and feels over the wall until he finds a dry patch and peels it back. In a rush, because something is in the water, and _oh my god it’s a shark it’s a shark they’re all going to die!_

“Is it with us, or out in the chamber?” he asks. Calmly. 

“Out there,” Ronon says, standing in the doorway and looking back. 

“Good,” Rodney says, keying in the code he worked out. The doors slide shut, and they’re trapped in a couple of metres of tunnel, water level slowly rising. But at least they’re not in there with the ‘thing’, and if Rodney can find the next panel, they can reach another stretch of tunnel. _No sharks, no sharks, no sharks. _“I can rig this to open remotely once we’re through the next door, then the water will hopefully keep draining… at least long enough for us to find a transporter, or a way out, something.”

“Something,” Ronon repeats, then shrugs and wades to the front to lead the way. Probably on purpose not going by Rodney’s orders, even though they were good orders, they were… well, no, if the thing is behind them and Teyla’s light for fighting they want her at the back ok that makes sense maybe.

* * *

Two doors later they still haven’t found any sign of a transporter, and the water is rising. It’s up to Rodney’s thighs and it’s sapping their energy. It’s disconcerting, too — the tunnels are opaque, like the wall back in the chamber, and out there they can see, above them as far as the eye stretches, water. Rodney’s not sure if it’s psychological or if there’s something wrong, but he’s sure he can feel the pressure of it pounding down on them. The only light source is their torches, and some kind of fish out there, buzzing with electricity. Rodney watches one and trips, John’s hand at his elbow the only thing keeping him from falling into the water. John, Rodney realises, is shivering hard. Rodney’s cold, too, the water’s not warm. He can’t warm John up any, anyway, not here. They’re working and John’s very strict about that. He has compartments in his head, all in ship-shape, military order. 

“Another door, McKay,” Ronon says, up ahead. 

Rodney speeds up a bit and joins him. Ronon’s got good at finding the panels that peel back for the controls, he’s already taking the cover off. He frowns, and Rodney can see why; this one’s different. 

“It’s an intersection,” John says, quietly, having snuck up by Rodney’s shoulder.

Rodney looks, and sure enough there are two doors, two options. They look exactly the same. His hands aren’t the steadiest as he connects his data pad, trying to download the data and translate the Ancient quicker than he’s really able. 

“Can we open both?” Teyla asks, her back to the rest of them, keeping watch. 

“No,” Rodney says, at once. “There’s too much water. It will only let me open one at a time, anyway. Just, give me a minute okay? I’m not a miracle worker.”

They give him five minutes, but he can’t come up with a solution. He considers a macro that’ll open both doors in quick succession so they can check each passageway, but he can see from the data the control panel is feeding him that the water-level is too high. What use will a glimpse and lots of water be, anyway? He tries to get any kind of map, or an idea of where the transporter is. There must be one somewhere. Why isn’t there more information anywhere down here? Maybe they’ve already passed it. Shit, shit. He scans each door, but it’s no use. He has no clue which way to go. 

“Pick one,” Teyla says, voice taught all of a sudden.

“What?” Rodney says, turning. 

“There’s something in the water,” Teyla says, backing up until she hits Ronon’s shoulder as he joins her. 

John yelps and flails, toppling into Rodney and the control panel, which sparks with the wave of water. Rodney pulls his hands away and yanks his tablet back, disconnecting it. 

“Sorry, sorry,” John says. “Something brushed my leg.”

He’s pulled his P90. 

“Don’t shoot, you idiot! There’s a ton of water behind this fragile glass!” Rodney squawks. It’s probably not glass, or that fragile, but still. 

John gives him a long stare as he directs the torch beam into the water. Right. Ronon and Teyla are also directing their light into the water around them, so Rodney joins in. Ronon spots it first, a dark shape about a foot long, bumping against the door to the left. It’s another cephalopod, smaller than the other, this one has a shell. It’s segmented, rippling with the water, and the whole thing moves eerily, twisting and floating and propelling forward with the movement of the water.

There are tentacles drifting behind it, like jelly-fish tentacles but with suckers, some of them thinner and twisting, like springs. Like a man-o-war. Rodney stares, transfixed, as the tentacles come at him more surely, as if sensing him. He does not want to get stung by an alien jelly-fish octopus man-o-war poison thing, but he’s frozen to the spot. The cephalopod shoots away from the door all at once, sharp and incredibly fast, and Rodney’s being dragged, hauled through the water by John as he scrambles clear. They all back up, Ronon helping pull Rodney who hasn’t got his feet under him yet. It’s not coming for them, it drifts on past them.

“Uh, I think I know why the Ancients hid those panels,” John says. 

Rodney nods. The cephalopod is feeling over the exposed controls, tentacles and suckers covering the buttons, pulling things apart. It turns white, sinking back into the water, as the door to the left slides open. 

“I guess we are going that way,” Teyla says.

The cephalopod careens through ahead of them, white in the beams of their torches, and they stagger on after it. The water level in the next passage is a little higher, but Rodney shuts the door behind them, opens the previous one, opens the door behind them, and the water lowers a little. Not much, but enough that they can move forwards. With the cephalopod. They follow it through two more doors, struggle on through one more tunnel, then the cephalopod deserts them, moving back the way they came. 

“We need to find a transporter,” Ronon says. 

Rodney has no answer, he can’t, currently, even find the next control panel. John’s been really quiet since the cephalopod, Rodney’s not sure if he’s tired or secretly hurt or sick, but he doesn’t seem to have any solution up his sleeve. Sometimes John pulls solutions from nowhere, Rodney pretends it's annoying because he's the one who has to implement the absurd ideas, but really it's kind of impressive. He looks around, a little desperately. Maybe they should have stayed in the chamber, drowned slower. 

“I don’t know,” he says, miserable and cold and exhausted. 

“We must just keep on going, in that case,” Teyla says, sounding just as tired. Ronon's silent and stiller than usual. 

“No, rest a moment,” John says. He doesn’t sound hurt or sick, just thoughtful. “Rodney, what are these tunnels for?” 

“Getting between the bases?” Rodney says. Maybe he has one of his stupid ideas afterall.

“But they run from that chamber, not from the control room or any part of that city,” John says. 

“Oh, you’re right,” Rodney says. “And if it was just between two points, there’d hardly have been divergences.”

“I think we’re in a maze,” John says, turning in a slow circle. It looks strange, just his head and torso above water. 

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Ronon growls, a knife coming out of the water, restlessness back. The Earth swear word sounds odd from him, carefully copied from one of the marines. 

They manage to persuade Ronon not to stab the tunnel walls and bring the ocean down upon them. Faster than it’s already leaking in. They carry on for a while, picking a route arbitrarily, but ten minutes later Teyla calls another halt, a rest to recalculate. John asks for ideas, but none of them have much. Ronon says he can find the way back to the cavern they left, but fucked if he has any more idea than the rest of them how to go forward. John nods, running his hand speculatively over the wall until he comes to the panel. 

“You know, this is all very coincidental, all these built-in protections from curious squid,” he says, frowning, running a finger over the smoothe, unmarked surface. “You’d almost think it was purpose-built, wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps it was,” Teyla says, frowning down at the water. “I think I have come across animals like this before, intanta. The people of Orchalio eat them, they are poisonous, it’s a strange custom. On the other side of that planet, the Ki-ia keep them as pets, and test their intelligence. Perhaps the ancients were embarking on a similar experiment.”

“So what? Who cares?” Ronon says.

“Maybe they were testing these creatures’ endurance,” Teyla says. 

“Octopuses would probably live through an apocalypse, they’re pretty adaptable,” John says. 

“Why do you know anything about octopuses?” Rodney asks. 

“Sat next to Martinez for an hour, this morning,” John says, shrugging. “These guys are fast to adapt, really brainy, kind of the Rodney McKays of the ocean.”

“That is not flattering,” Rodney grumbles, flushing a bit because it kind of is complimentary and John’s grinning at him. Teyla rolls her eyes. “Yes. Well.”

“Perhaps the Ancestors were not studying global warming, but were studying these intanta. Octopuses,” Teyla says. “Trying to test them, hiding transport systems, subjecting them to extreme environmental changes. Building mazes for them.”

“Cool,” Ronon says. “No, I don’t get it.”

“They know the way through the maze,” Teyla says. “All we need to do is lure them here, and I think we already have the tools for that. When that intanta came after us, that part of the passage had a lot of the moss.”

“Right,” Rodney says. “Right! We get the octopus, intanta, whatever, and we lure it in, and we follow it through the maze! Wait. No. How do we get it to go the right way? It already came and went.”

“Maybe it took a wrong turn and had to go back,” John says. “That one looked like a baby, really small.”

“Lure the big octopus and hope it doesn’t eat us. Good plan, Sheppard,” Rodney snaps. 

“I suggest,” Teyla says, glaring at them both, “that we go back to the cavern and see if there’s any data on these intanta. You were looking for data on the transport system previously, Rodney.”

“Good point! Right!” Rodney says, snapping his fingers, tugging off his pack and getting out the data pad and the samples of moss he brought. “I’ve got everything here, no need to go backwards.”

They gather around him as he works, shivering, huddling for warmth. Teyla hums, pausing now and then to tell them what she remembers about her alien octopuses, the _intanta_. The humming seems to be a memory-aid, it also helps Rodney block out his anxiety and focus on the work, not on the masses of water surrounding him and trying to drown him, or the giant alien sea monsters they’re trying to summon.


	4. Journey's End

The problem with luring octopuses in with moss, the real problem, is that it isn’t easy to limit it to one octopus. The first one comes, small, barely a tentacle in sight, brushing their fingers, friendly. Rodney’s found in the database that the cephalopods here, unlike on Earth, can see colour and use it to communicate. The Ancients ‘programmed’ the octopuses to associate a particular projected colour with ‘food at the other end of the maze’. It’s easy to turn the water just the right shade with light on his data pad, and fascinating to see the excitement in the patterns fizzing over the octopus’s skin. It shoots off and they hurry to follow, splashing and cursing. 

And then the others start showing up. Handfuls of them. All of them are small or medium sized, but John shrieks every time one brushes him and some of the tentacles look lethal, and it turns into some sort of terrifying game or keep-away, trying to stay out of reach and still follow the things. And then, and then, as if an army of small octopuses isn’t terrifying enough, a shadow falls across their moss-and-P90-and-torch lit tunnel, and not one, not two, but three very, very big cephalopods start circling, keeping them company. And the water’s still rising. 

“What kind of death-maze is this!” John shouts, stumbling for the millionth time and coughing roughly. “Hell! These things are freaking me out.”

“We noticed,” Teyla says, projecting an air of calm and soothing, the edge of amused sarcasm barely making a dent. 

She’s doing okay, leading the way, she seems to be good at keeping out of the way of tentacles. She also seems to be making friends with the octopuses. There’s one who seems to adore her, bumping her hands and glowing all kinds of happy colours. Or maybe angry colours who can tell? Rodney would bet on happy though. Happy or enrapt or completely in love with her. They don’t even need to get the panels off anymore, their cephalopod-escort is getting them all, tentacles swarming over everything. Once Rodney loosens the panels the cephalopods find, they do all the work.

“There is a problem I think,” Teyla says, after about fifteen minutes. It’s getting harder to walk, the water level rising. 

“What?” Rodney asks. 

“Not wrong, exactly, but… it’s too long. The way through is too long, we’ll drown before we get to the next installation,” Teyla says. “They’re not taking us in a straight line.”

She has a point. John calls a halt again and they reassess. Rodney looks through the Ancient’s data to see if there’s anything about getting the octopuses to lead the way to a transport, but there’s not. 

“They’re good at finding the panels,” Teyla says. “Maybe they can find more. Is there an energy signal the transports might give off?”

“No, not that I can detect with the equipment I have on me anyway,” Rodney says. “Not if it’s not in use.”

“What about that they can detect?” Teyla says. 

“Oh. Probably, but how can… oh!” Rodney snaps his fingers, beaming, having a brainwave. 

It takes Rodney about ten minutes to find what he needs, but he has a bunch of tech and he manages to rig something that he’s fairly sure will mimic the dull, barely-there signal a dormant transporter gives off. It takes him a further fifteen minutes to find a game the Ancients had been playing with the octopuses that will work. John hides behind Ronon while the cephalopods swarm Rodney’s little fake transporter, until he turns it off and they all shoot away, swarming over the walls. 

Then there’s more rushing, more water, John tripping over his feet and nearly drowning himself yet again. They’re struggling by the time the octopuses, three corridors later, find and get Rodney to help them tear away a covering that reveals controls. When Rodney hooks up his datapad he finally, finally finds a transporter.

* * *

John usually likes watching Rodney work, but they’ve been here for half an hour, with a transporter, and nothing. He growls, but that just gets him a glare from Rodney and Teyla telling him to hush. Ronon’s busy trying to fight water with a knife. John hopes he stabs one of these fish octopus things. Most of the cephalopods have dispersed, but there are these tiny little things left, with no shell and kind of like fish with tentacles. They seem to have no brains, just bumping around in the dark, soft against his hands and arms and bumping his legs. It’s annoying; they’re too much like bugs, they make his skin crawl. He shudders, brushing one away. And Rodney can’t get into the transporter.

“Well, we’re dead,” Rodney says. 

John coughs. Teyla, shortest of them, sighs and sinks a little further into the water. Ronon twists and grabs her, hoisting her upright so her head’s out, offering his shoulder. 

“So dead,” Rodney says.

Ronon’s eyes burn into John’s head, but he can’t save them. Not this time. He stands, helpless, water over his shoulders. Ronon wades closer, grabbing John, hauling him over to Rodney. John’s hand closes around Rodney’s arm, linking them. They stand, heads back to keep out of the water, gasping for breath. The octopus fish things, curious, bump against them. Rodney brushes a few away, and John’s heart does an uncomfortable thuddum-thump as it always does when Rodney  _ takes care  _ of him. Christ. He looks between his team, meeting their eyes. No one has anything to say, buried under a mountain, under an ocean, on a strange planet. No one will ever find them. At least, John thinks, at least he isn’t alone. At least he won’t be alone afterwards, left to grieve for these people who have become better friends than he ever deserved. 

“It’s been an honour to serve with you,” John croaks. “All of you. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Ronon says. 

John wants to say something more profound, but he can’t think of anything. Rodney reaches over to hold Teyla’s arm. John holds Ronon’s shoulder and feels Teyla’s hand against his back. He coughs, bending into it, and his head slips under the water. He fights to the surface and coughs again. Ronon pulls him up but they’re all tired now. John tries to even his breathing, but he’s already coughing again, leaning against Rodney, both of them going under. He gets his feet and pulls Rodney, hauling them up, Teyla steadying him as they surface. 

“They were worried about the intanta getting into the transport system, Rodney,” she says, gasping for breath, struggling to keep out of the water. 

“Yes, you’re right,” Rodney says. “I don’t know how that helps me.”

“They can open the doors between the tunnels, but they can’t get in the transports. There isn’t water, where the transporters goes, the Ancestors couldn’t risk the intanta getting in and drowning,” Teyla says. “It’s a different kind of system than the gateways, yes?”

“Yes, yes,” Rodney says, going back to the panel and plugging in his tablet. It’s almost under the water, but just about okay. They watch with held breath as he taps and curses, John and Ronon taking turns hauling him up when he goes under.

There’s a great rush suddenly, water sucking, and they’re all pulled in, all of them under-water. John holds his breath and forces himself not to gasp as a door snaps shut behind him, his P-90 useless in the water, the torch-lights flickering. He kicks, looking for the surface, and comes up in a gap of about half a foot between the water and the roof. They are in a transporter, but the controls are under water. Ronon and Rodney surface, too. He can feel Teyla, he grabs her and pulls and she comes up too, all of them kicking to remain in the small breathing space.

“Oh, great,” Rodney says, thrashing about, trying to turn and take their new prison in. 

“I’ll take a look at the controls,” John suggests. 

“Yes, yes, tell me how fucked we still are,” Rodney says. 

John swims down, trying to find any spark, but everything’s dead. He resurfaces and shakes his head. Teyla takes the scanner from Rodney and gives it a whack; it’s stopped working, though, too water-logged. 

“We should get waterproof ones,” Ronon says. “Like your tablet, McKay.”

“I made it a case,” Rodney says. “Oh God, I’m gonna have to look myself, aren’t I? Fine. Hold this.”

He whacks the tablet into Ronon’s chest and takes a deep breath, thrashing wildly and nearly drowning all of them. He comes up a minute later and, like John, shakes his head. 

“No luck?” John asks, just to annoy Rodney.

“Oh obviously I found a solution can’t you tell from my suddenly sunny disposition?” Rodney tries, but there’s no snap to it. “It’s dead. From the other side, maybe I could get it going, but from here? I’m not sure I can even get the door back open.”

“I won’t give up,” Teyla says. “There must be a way, we just have to find it.”

John agrees with her and tries for some good morale, but secretly, he’s sure they’re dead. It’s just a matter of time. Under cover of the water he takes Rodney’s hand, and Rodney goes quiet, holding on tight, not looking at John. John thinks about loving him, about loving Teyla and Ronon in slightly different ways, of their little family. Of Torren back on Atlantis waiting with Kanaan. Of his own mother, again, the sunshine he always remembers her in. He takes a breath and coughs, sinking as his energy wanes. He sinks and sinks, floating, eyes open in the salty water. He can see Teyla, her hair spread out around them, Ronon with his eyes shut, arm around Teyla’s shoulder. They link up again, none of them fighting for the surface. 

There’s a sharp tug and another rush of water, bowling him over, spilling him out onto hard cold ground and he can breathe, cold air and oxygen. He lies, panting, and looks up an Ancient ceiling. He can’t make out what happened, but he can hear Maina talking so he gets up to his feet, pulling Rodney and Teyla with him. Teyla helps Ronon up, and they stand, staring around. They’re in a control room just like the one he left three, four hours ago on top of the mountain. This one, though, the light is rippling, the air is thicker and smells funny, like salt and mould and sweat. Martinez peers at him, head thrust forward, face breaking out into a beaming grin as they stumble out of the transporter and look around. Corporal Maina comes over and gives a sharp salute, also grinning. Teyla steps away from them, looking around at their new location. Rodney’s still holding John’s hand. 

“How did you get us?” Teyla asks. 

“Oh, you know. When we sent down the RoV there was this curious squid thing and Martinez here lost her mind. Sir,” Maina says, adding in another salute for good measure, grinning at Doctor Martinez, who’s scowling and has her arms crossed. “She followed the squid instead of looking at the bloody building.”

“Lucky I did,” Martinez says, raising her chin. “Caught sight of you guys on the cameras. It wasn’t a squid, anyway, corporal. And there were three of them. Closer to an octopus, but this is bigger than any I’ve known of on Earth, and it has too many legs, and it’s got teeth. It’s so huge! And teeth! It’s really cool, and I’m pretty sure from the minimal behaviour I was able to observe, that ‘it’ is a siphonophore, and is multiple-”

Teyla steps back toward them, raising her hand. 

“Martinez followed the squid, ma’am” Maina says, giving Teyla a salute and talking over Martinez. “We talked cap into letting us dive once we recalled the ROV and checked this place out and found oxygen and life support and all. And Martinez found the transporter, just jabbed at few buttons and blammo! You guys fell out into our laps. As it were. Ma’am. Sir.”

She pauses, waiting for a response, then goes for another salute. John coughs tiredly at her before asking for a radio. 

“No good,” Martinez says. “We lost contact with the surface at about a thousand feet. This is only one fifty down, by the way, not as deep as we thought, I haven’t worked out how it’s suspended yet but we’re not on the bottom.”

“Fascinating,” Rodney says. “Have you got the controls working?”

John’s sure Rodney would like to have a look for himself, but he’s still holding John’s elbow and for the moment he’s focused enough on his team that he’s not running off looking into everything. He’s probably also not sure John won’t hit the ground if Rodney lets go. John’s sure he won’t, but he’s happy not to test it for the moment. Ronon and Teyla have already gone to find somewhere to sit. 

“Sort of. I found you through the cephalopod,” Martinez says. “The Ancients were tracking them, they have subcus, Ancient version; the internal sensors here are rigged to follow them, I just added a few parametres so they’d tell me if any cephalopod was near organic matter of certain height, weight, density.”

“Smart,” Rodney says, narrowing his eyes. “You’re a biologist?”

“Double doctorate, marine biology and engineering. My masters is in applied physics,” Martinez says. 

“Hm. You’ll be working with me when you’re not out with SGA-6, from now on,” Rodney says. She opens her mouth to speak, but Rodney waves her away. “We can discuss it later.”

John zones out a moment, looking at Ronon and Teyla sat down, jealous. He calls for a twenty minute rest, and goes to sit with them. Rodney follows, semi-reluctantly. Maina brings them MREs, blankets, and water, and then she and Martinez leave them for a while. Rodney eats his food, rubbing over John’s back and shoulders to warm him as he continues to shiver. 

“You need to be fatter,” Rodney says, pulling the blanket over John’s hair and scrubbing. It doesn’t have much effect.

“It’s actually not true that fat is warm,” John says. “Good circulation and-”

“Shut up,” Rodney says. “So, are we staying here or getting out?” 

“We need to get in touch with Khaghashi and Atlantis,” Teyla points out. 

“Out,” Ronon agrees, nodding, reaching over and taking John’s food to finish for him. 

John doesn’t protest, just slumps against Rodney for a moment, closing his eyes. He feels kind of sick, suddenly, things tipping around him, thinking about Rodney just gone, the empty earth, the fog, the water. 

“Couldn’t find you,” John murmurs. “Earlier.”

“Oh. Well, ta-da, you found me,” Rodney says. He wraps an arm around John. 

Just for a moment. A few moments. Then John pulls away, straightening, and goes to get Martinez and Maina. 

* * *

The platform English has made base is barely big enough to be called that. It’s a raft, two stories high, in the middle of the ocean. There are two boats tethered to it and English is in consultation with four people, two Rodney recognises from the boat to Lak, two are paler, outlandish in trousers that look like nothing so much as bluejeans, and vests. As soon as John appeared English snapped to it, providing him with a radio and getting him up to date. John’s been stood in the huddle of men for the past ten minutes, speaking into the radio and to English while Teyla and the locals speak to Khaghashi and Ronon and Rodney sit, useless, with nothing to do. Rodney is bored, tired, wet, and cold. 

“Are you gonna go back, do more sciency stuff?” Ronon asks. 

“Home,” Rodney says, dumbly. “Hot bath. Food. Bath. Sleep. God, a hot bath, did I say that already?”

“Mm,” Ronon agrees, stretching out and putting his arms behind his head, shutting his eyes. He nudges Rodney with his knee and grins. 

“What?” Rodney asks. 

“Nothin’,” Ronon says. “Good to see you.”

“Oh, right, yes, I forgot you thought we were dead,” Rodney says. “Thanks for coming to find us.”

“Always,” Ronon says. 

“Yes,” Rodney says. “And, um, you too. I’ll come get you.”

“Save me from the octopoos,” Ronon says, comfortably, grinning again. 

“Octopuses. Shut up,” Rodney grumbles. 

“... okay just… no, it should be fine now, and Rodney thinks the two site are linked so it’s not all lost,” John says, coming wandering over. “Sheppard out. We’re grabbing a ride back to Atlantis, Richard wants a debrief. And as much of that intel from the control room you can get.”

“Oh, joy,” Rodney says. 

“Captain Aida is going to carry on his research, and I think I’ll send SGA-9 to do the diplomatic thing with Lak,” John says. “We’ll come back, Rodney, don’t worry.”

“I was thinking this might be more Radek’s thing,” Rodney says. “I haven’t seen anything that might actually work in terms of energy production, I think this is all pre-ZPM and I think they got incredibly sidetracked by the marine life.”

“SGA-9 work with Dr Collins, she’ll do, Radek’s busy,” John says, yawning. “You can’t stick him in the middle of an ocean just for fun.”

“I could too. Which one’s Collins?” Rodney grumbles. 

“She’s the one who keeps nagging you to use hydraulic power,” John says. “She’s got a good point, by the way, I read her last proposal.”

“I know, you starred it in my inbox and highlighted bits of it, and then sent me snippets all through the last staff meeting,” Rodney says. 

“What’s that word, again?” Ronon says, eyes still shut. 

“Which one? There are a lot of them,” Rodney says. 

“Dork,” John says, sighing. “The word is ‘dork’, buddy, and yes, I probably am.”

Ronon laughs, low and content. Teyla comes and joins them, flopping down between Rodney and Ronon and leaning into Rodney’s shoulder. 

“It will be very nice to see Torren,” she says, pulling the radio off her ear and tossing it to John, who catches it, turning away. 

“Sheppard, go ahead Qui,” he says, walking back to his little huddle of men. 

Rodney idly scrolls through his data on the pad that is damp, but serviceable. He made a waterproof case for it ages ago, it’s kind of worked. He set the scanner to map things as they moved through the complex, but it hasn’t got huge amounts of information, especially since he accidentally drowned it, and he still hasn’t found any schematics. He really wants to have a look at the sensors below them, see what data they’ve got from their octopuses. But not today, he can get Radek to download everything and look at it all from the comfort of Atlantis. Maybe Martinez will even bring him some of it back. She’ll dump all the kooky energy things on him, like the weird moss. Maybe Botany will take that one. 

“Oh, great,” Sheppard says. 

Rodney looks up and sees Lorne sat in the prow of a boat. Radek’s with him and they’ve rigged it with a better engine, at least, so it’ll be a shorter trip home. The locals on the boat look pleased as punch with their new boat, so that’ll help with the diplomatic stuff. Sheppard looks grim but resigned and Rodney can’t help laughing. 


	5. And After all of That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now complete.

As soon as they get back to Atlantis, John is drawn into debriefing. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla head down to the infirmary for post mission checks, all of them tired but a little buzzed. John won’t be long, he’ll schedule a thorough debrief where they’ll all have to be present for tomorrow, tonight is just a quick one. He’ll join them in the infirmary. It’s all familiar, all run of the mill. They go automatically, shoulders brushing now and then, Teyla smiling when Rodney grumbles wordlessly about it being cold. Marie’s waiting for them, pointing them to three beds in a row and then changing her mind and sending them to the showers. Doctor Gush, who’s taken over as CMO since Jennifer decided to stay Earth-side most of the time, has pulled a list of tests for their post-mission and then left his staff to deal. He misses the night shift at the SGC and is eternally grouchy in daytime hours. Rodney’s pretty sure he’s a vampire. 

“Mess next?” Ronon suggests, lying back to be scanned. 

“I am heading to my quarters to see Torren and Kanaan,” Teyla says. 

“Not all of us have husbands at home awaiting us eagerly with a nice dinner all fixed,” Rodney says. “I’m in, Ronon.”

“It is rather wonderful,” Teyla says, smugly. “Though, Kanaan isn’t expecting me back today, so I do not suppose he has bothered to cook. I will bring Torren to the mess and join you there.”

"Awesome, team bonding,” John says, striding in. 

Rodney, now that he’s clean and horizontal and home, embraces fully the horror of how much John stinks of brine and dead fish, and how dirty he is. How is it he’s dirty, they basically went swimming in their uniforms! 

“Shower,” Marie says, firmly, catching John’s arrival and coming over. “Leave all your clothes in there, we will decontaminate them. Or burn them… so take scrubs.”

Rodney falls asleep during his examination and has to be woken for the mess. They wander down, all of them yawning, and gather around the table near the window that they’ve staked out as theirs, all of them fighting sleep. Teyla joins them twenty minutes later and Torren. It’s good, to be together, to be home. What’s really, really excellent is the thought that PX9-443 is now pretty much entirely someone else’s responsibility. Rodney’s decided that actually he's got all the readings he wants, he’s pretty certain there’s nothing useful, and he is planning to dump the whole thing in Dr Cardew’s lap. She’ll love it there. 

“Her name’s Collins,” John mumbles, when Rodney muses about it out loud. He’s almost asleep, eyes closed, warm against Rodney.

“And she’s very nice,” Teyla adds, giving him a stern look. “Torren and I are friends with her, we will both be displeased if you behave like you are a meh’rar to her.”

“What’s a meh’rar?” John asks, stirring a little from where he’s sacked out against Rodney’s shoulder, dragging his eyes open. 

“Once upon a time,” Teyla begins, shifting Torren in her arms so he’s lying down, gazing up at her, sleepy as well. “There was a ponorah, I think you might call it a goat-ish, Rodney, you ‘lanteans eat ponorah. Ben Falola cooks it often.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s goat-ish,” John says, yawning. “Funny little things, run like hell, lethal horns. We hunted them, Ronon.”

“Yeah,” Ronon says, nodding. “Goat-ish.”

“So, there was a ponorah, a very young ponorah who lived by a lake on Athos,” Teyla continues, smiling around at them, holding them enrapt. “One day when ponorah is lying in the sunshine, along comes a spiky little janna.”

“Like a snail, but kinda also a hedgehog,” John says. “Jinto showed me some when the Athosians were still on the mainland, way back.”

“Janna asks the ponorah, please may I come through? You are lying on my path. But the ponorah is sleepy,” Teyla says, drawing out the words, yawning. “It’s sunny, he doesn’t wish to move, so he lies still and lets out a great snore. The janna must walk all the way around to get to the water. He is tired and cross when he returns, and again asks Ponorah ‘please could you move, you are on the path?’ but again, the ponorah lets out a great snore and doesn’t move.”

“I would move,” Rodney grumbles. “I would totally move for the janna.”

“Good,” Teyla says. “The janna has to go all the long way around the great bulk of the ponorah, this is before they shrunk and were small. Next, along comes the keenah bird, hop hop hopping along. They too ask Ponorah ‘won’t you move? I’m trying to get some water, it is hot and I am tired’. But the ponorah, he looks at the little hopping bird and laughs. ‘If you were a real bird, you could fly. Fly over me, keenah’. The keenah bird, they can’t fly, so they hop, hop, hop all the long way around. On their return, Ponorah just laughs again.”

“I feel like I’ve heard this one,” John mutters, pulling up a foot to rest on the bench, leaning into his knee. Rodney rubs the small of his back; John gets all curled up when his stomach’s cramping. Probably is, actually, after today. Maybe there’s some peppermint tea in his quarters, he started trading for it after John’s second abdominal surgery. Not that John likes it, but providing him with a mug makes Rodney feel better. 

“What comes next?” Ronon asks, leaning his elbows on the table. Teyla smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, all sunny affection. “Another animal looking for water, right? Maybe a looper?”

“You are quite correct,” Teyla says, grinning a bit. “Next, along comes a Satedan looper, we know them as koney, Torren, and I think Earth-ers call them… rabbit.”

“Hunted those, too,” John says. 

“So good to eat,” Ronon agrees. 

“Well, Ponorah is too lazy to catch the looper when she comes loping along. Loopers in those days were quite big, but slow and steady and she had come a long, long way, and the ground away from the path was rough. So she too asks Ponorah ‘please may I come by? I need to get water for my babies, they are thirsty’. But Ponorah, he is too busy mocking the looper for being slow and not smart enough, and he doesn’t want to move. So, Looper too has to go all the long way around.”

“They aren’t smart,” Ronon says. “Easy to catch.”

“But smart enough to build, and smart enough to hide,” Teyla says. “Everyone has their strengths, even the loopers. And everyone has weaknesses. Even lazy old Ponorah, right Torren?”

He makes a happy sound, nuzzled in Teyla’s arms, listening to the story though he can’t understand a whole lot of it yet. Rodney’s just glad to be home, to have John close, to have Ronon calm and settled, and Teyla telling stories with so much warmth. 

“A puppy,” John says, quietly. “Puppies are nice.”

“And, just as you say, here one comes to get some water from the lake, ever so thirsty and ever so tired,” Teyla says. “These are the silly animals you keep as pets, right?”

“Right,” Rodney says. 

“So along comes a puppy, bouncing down the path, and they want to come on through but big Ponorah is in the way, and the puppy is only small still, the grass beside the path is long and easy to get lost in. ‘I need some water, please could you move so I can come on by?’ says the puppy. But, Ponorah is far too busy complaining about the puppy’s energy and enthusiasm. He isn’t going to move. The puppy has to go all the way through the long, long grass, and when they come back, they have to go all through the grass again, getting lost. But they find the path again, and further up, beyond a bend, there is the looper. And a little further is the keenah bird, and finally the janna.”

“Uh oh,” Ronon says. “Now the ponorah is outnumbered. He better watch out.”

“Indeed,” Teyla says. “The little animals talk, and eventually they decide to call on the Ancestors. They tell how the ponorah is rude, and hurtful, and thoughtless, and how he will not help and only criticises and laughs and pretends to be asleep. The Ancestors hum in thought and promise that there will be a come-uppance. The little animals go back to their business, but the ponorah… well. When he gets up, his shoulders feel far too big, and his back is bent out of his natural shape. He heads for the lake to find water, and he is slow. Each step is a little hop, a bounce, and each time he pauses, he feels sleepy.”

“I am definitely not a ponorah,” Rodney says. 

“She said don’t be a meh’rar, not that you are a ponorah,” Ronon says, slinging an arm around Rodney’s shoulders. “Go on, Teyla. What happens next?”

“Ponorah finally reaches the lake, and when he looks into the water, he doesn’t recognise himself. Gone is his long face and beautiful horns, in their place is a short nose, harder to reach the water, and only tiny little ears. He tries to let out a great roar, but all that comes is a bleat, a ‘meeh, meeeh’. And even when he does manage a roar, it comes out small, a little ‘raar’ sound. And so he got his name. The meh’rar are always trying to roar, and are always rude and discontent.”

“I’ll be nice to Collins,” Rodney promises. John’s fallen asleep at some point, leg jammed against the table and body slumped against Rodney, head on his knee. He chooses that moment to let out a snore and they all laugh. 

“I’m tired too,” Ronon says. “Think I’ll head to bed.”

“You can sleep in our outer room,” Teyla offers. “If you don’t wish to be alone.”

“Torren will wake me far too early,” Ronon says, getting up. “I’ll see you in the morning, remind Sheppard he’s coming for a run, Rodney. I’m glad you’re both alive.”

“Me too,” Rodney says, elbowing John gently to wake him. “Night, Ronon.”

“Torren is ready for bed also,” Teyla says. 

“Will you be okay?” Rodney asks, checking because John would if he wasn’t asleep. And because he wants to know himself, that too. She smiles at him, arms full of her son, and he knows she will be. “I’m glad we got you home to them.”

“As am I,” Teyla says. 

“I’m also glad you were there to help us out of that mess,” Rodney says. “Saved our asses.”

“As usual,” Teyla says. “Thank you, Rodney. Goodnight.”

After that it’s just him and John, and it’s just a question of getting John to wake up enough to unknot himself. It takes a few minutes, by which time all the lights on the city are dimming, night falling. Technically Atlantis runs 24/7, but there are six hours, between eleven pm and five am, where the lights dim and things close up and quiet down. Elizabeth decreed it early in the expedition, in an attempt to keep them all sane, and it’s stuck. The canteen staff are all closing things down and leaving. John and Rodney stumble out with them, yawning, John getting a few salutes from the marines working. They head for the nearest transport, then pause at the same time. 

“C’mon,” John mutters, taking Rodney’s elbow. “I’ll take my shirt off and distract you.”

“In the transporter??” Rodney squeaks, following. “Are you ridiculous? You can’t do that! What will your precious marines think when they see you walking around naked! Good lord, you’d be shipped back to earth before you could say, say, say, ponorah! You can’t just wander about Atlantis half-clothed!” 

“Rodney?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re through,” John says, waving an arm at the corridor. Sure enough, here they are almost at Rodney’s quarters, he didn’t even feel the transporter. He checks for water, takes a deep breath, and steps out. 

“It’s good to be home,” Rodney says. 

“Mm. You could take your shirt off, too,” John says, stumbling and coughing just once. “Christ. Long day.”

“Just remember the whale,” Rodney says, and watches John’s face light up. “I’ve already written a proposal for trading something for one.”

“I could totally have flown it,” John says. 

Rodney swipes his hand over the sensor and they step into his room. John lets out a groan and falls across the bed, boots and scrubs and all. Rodney rolls him off onto the floor and gets himself undressed and into boxers and t-shirt, his prefered sleep-wear. John seems quite content to sleep on the floor. 

“You said you’d take your shirt off,” Rodney reminds him. 

John rolls back up to his feet, stripping quickly, his and Rodney’s scrubs and some of Rodney’s laundry left on the floor this morning all ending up in the laundry basket. John always wears almost as many clothes to bed as he does in the day - sweats and socks and a long-sleeve shirt. He likes to sleep with the windows open to let in the air, and he gets cold. They lie down together, and Rodney breathes a sigh of relief as John wraps tight around him, pressing close, cheek against Rodney’s hair. 

“Got you back,” John says, voice a little unsteady. 

“Yes you did,” Rodney assures, letting himself be held, letting John assure himself. “Ronon says you’re running with him, in the morning.”

“I am really, definitely not. You can go instead,” John says. “Oh, I am really, really glad we didn’t lose either of you. Thank god for octopuses, huh?”

“Yeah yeah, he always gets all the credit,” Rodney grumbles, snuggling closer. “Go to sleep, Sheppard, I’m not fighting Ronon in the morning when he comes to drag you on the run.”

John lets out a heart-felt groan, but it turns into a happy sound, his arms warm and strong around Rodney. He knows that in the morning, John will be up and ready for a run with Ronon, and that they’ll have breakfast together and then John and Teyla will do training with the new marines while Ronon spars with some of the better ones, and then Rodney will meet them for coffee before the debrief. They have staff meetings tomorrow, as well, and Rodney will have to get SGA-9 ready to return to PX9-443. It is good to be back, even is tomorrow promises to be long and dull. For now, he is safe in John’s arms. 


End file.
